In April 1903, the steamship Republic spills more than two thousand immigrants onto Ellis Island. Among them are Diamante, age twelve, and Vita, nine, sent by their poor families in southern Italy to make their way in America. Amid the chaos and splendor of New York, the misery and criminality of Little Italy, and the shady tenants of Vita's father's decrepit Prince Street boarding house, Diamante and Vita struggle to survive, to create a new life,...

New York City, 1894. To Gramercy Park, bordered by elegant town houses, cloistered behind its high iron fence, comes Mario Alfieri, the world's greatest tenor. Poised for his premier at the Metropolitan Opera, the summit of society, the handsome Alfieri needs a refuge from the clamor of New York's elite... and from the eager women who rule it. He finds it, he thinks, at Gramercy Park, in the elegant mansion of the recently deceased Henry Ogden Slade....

"Matelda, the Cabrelli family's matriarch, has always been brusque and opinionated. Now, as she faces the end of her life, she is determined to share a long-held secret with her family about her own mother's great love story: with her childhood friend, Silvio, and with dashing Scottish sea captain John Lawrie McVicars, the father Matelda never knew. . . . In the halcyon past, Domenica Cabrelli thrives in the coastal town of Viareggio until her beloved...

"A tale rich in color, character, and vivid historical detail, When we were strangers chronicles the tumultuous life journey of a young immigrant seamstress, as she travels from her isolated Italian mountain village through the dark corners of late nineteenth century America."--From publisher's description.

"Sebastian is encouraged by his fiancé to bring his Italian hairdresser father Salvo to a weekend get-together to meet her wealthy and eccentric family. As the weekend turns into an outrageous clash of cultures, Sebastian and Salvo discover that the great thing about family is everything about family."--container.

"In the early 1920s, a Red Scare gripped America. Many of those targeted were Italians, Eastern Europeans, and other immigrants. When an armed robbery resulting in the death of two people broke headlines in Massachusetts, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti—both Italian immigrants—were quick to be accused. A heated trial ensued, but through it all, the two men maintained their innocence. The controversial case quickly rippled past borders as...