Born With Teeth by Kate Mulgrew

These days, you’re most likely to recognize longtime actress Kate Mulgrew from her role as “Red” Reznikov on the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black.  But Mulgrew has a varied acting history that spans decades.

 In her new memoir, Mulgrew talks in detail about many of the stages of her life.  She details her upbringing in a large, Catholic family on a beautiful Iowa farm, going to New York to study acting with Stella Adler and the death of her younger sister.  A young Kate has to make a decision to work on not one, but two prestigious projects while quitting her training.

She has several intense romantic relationships and as a young woman, becomes pregnant and gives the baby up for adoption with no knowledge of the child’s whereabouts.   This painful decision colors much of her future and mental health but Mulgrew continues working at a staggering pace.  She eventually marries and has two sons with artistic director Robert Egan. By the end of the book, the reader sees two of the actress’s biggest life events: the search for her biological daughter and her role as Kathryn Janeway on Star Trek: Voyager. 

The actress who plays colorful roles on the stage and screen is no less vibrant in real life.  Mulgrew’s memoir is written with honesty, wit, and beautiful language.  Check out Born With Teeth from the library today!

Agostino by Alberto Moravia

Originally written in 1940’s Italy and rejected by Fascist censors, Agostino by Alberto Moravia has been retranslated and republished by the New York Review of Books. Despite being set in a different country and different time, it tells a timeless and universal story of isolation and loss of innocence. Thirteen year old Agostino is vacationing at a beach with his attractive and newly widowed mother. An only child, he has basked in his mother’s attentions all his life. So, when she seems to enjoy the attentions of a handsome young man on the beach, Agostino begins to feel jealous, confused and rejected.To avoid his mother, he hangs out with a gang of tough working class boys, boys with whom he has nothing in common. They steal and vandalize property. They communicate each other with insults and physical blows. They humiliate Agostino emotionally and physically. Nevertheless, driven by curiosity and a desire to leave behind his childhood(and his attachment to his mother), he seeks them out daily. He comes to realize that he no longer fits into either world.

Check out Agostino by Alberto Moravia @ the library!

Inferno by Dan Brown

Instead of religion, Dan Brown tackles science in this fast paged, page turning read that will leave you on the edge of your seat.  It begins with Professor Langdon (of Da Vince Code fame) in a Florence hospital suffering from a gunshot wound and amnesia.   After a woman breaks into his room and starts shooting he escapes with the help of a doctor.  Trying to figure out why he’s in Florence with people shooting at him leads Langdon on a path though the great art and buildings of the city.  As in Dan Brown’s other books the history, art, literature, and science are real.  Check out Inferno@ the library!

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

Porto Vergona, Italy, 1962.  Young Pasquale Tursi has come home from university in Florence after the death of his father to care for his mother in their tiny fishing village on the Italian coast.  He dreams of making his father's tiny hotel over into an elegant pensione that wealthy American tourists will flock to.  It is one morning, Pasquale standing waist deep in the bay, tossing rocks to build up the breakwall so the waves will not wash away his tiny beach, that the lovely American actress appears from the sea.  From the set of Cleopatra in Rome, Dee Moray is frail, dying, and has been sent to Porto Vergogna to wait for a man.  Pasquale is instantly in love.

Hollywood, California.  Present day.  Claire Silver is contemplating quitting her job as chief development assistant to legendary Hollywood producer Michael Deane.  Once a force to be reckoned with, Michael is a washed up relic of golden age Hollywood, and Claire spends her days listening to terrible movie pitches.  But when an elderly Italian man turns up on the lot, looking for an American actress he last saw in Italy fifty years ago, Claire believes she may have found the story she's been waiting for.

Beautiful Ruins is a tangle of interconnected stories that unfold across time and over continents that offers a glimpse at the extraordinary lives of ordinary people.  Wry, funny, heartbreaking and brutally honest, this engrossing novel will have you craving a trip to the sun-soaked cliffs of the Italian seacoast.  Stretching from the second World War to the nerve-racking and more than slightly ridiculous production lots of modern Hollywood, this surprising adventure is at its heart an epic love story you definately want in your beach bag this summer!

On Persephone's Island by Mary Simeti

Here is a book for those who loved Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert and Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mays.  Mary Simeti went to Sicily in 1962 to do volunteer work, fell in love, married a Sicilian and remained in Sicily, running his farm on the island. This beautifully written book covers the year 1983, the rhythm of the farm work, the work and customs of the Sicilian people, and the history and mythology of the island.  Check out On Persephone's Island @ the library!