In Tuscany

For thousands of listeners, Frances Mayes captures the essence of Tuscany like no other writer. "In Tuscany" is a window on the world of feasts and festivals, food and wine, people and culture that she and her husband fell in love with. Mayes takes her listeners on a tour of her daily life -- to the piazza, with its medieval courtyards, people with their pets and their cars, and snippets of overheard conversations; to the campo, where she evokes the shifting seasons in the hunt for mushrooms, the harvest of the grapes, and the first olive pressing.

No one celebrates like the Tuscans do, and here are feste of all kinds -- Christmas dinner for twenty-seven at a neighbor's house and a donkey ride around the church in Montepulciano.

Finally, she celebrates la belleza -- the beauty -- of Tuscany. "In Tuscany" reveals the singular splendor of one of the world's best-loved and most-visited regions.