Lucille Bellucci: 8 books

In her stories, Lucille Bellucci covers the world, where she has lived, with her peculiar off-center view. Her humor is a just treatment of comedy, and no one can deliver a grim look at history as she has lived it. Eight of Bellucci's stories and essays have won first-place awards. You can see her thoughts, action, and inner tremors. They are unrehearsed Life.

As in her collection, Pastiche: Stories and Such, Lucille Bellucci continues her oblique observations of the world. There is hard truth in some of them, and a fond embrace of feline innocence in her homage to Pinky and the Gang. In between, she delivers a riot of experiences. She favors a mix, and that is what stands between these covers. Bellucci is the compleat award winner.

Mai-yeen and Rafaella Bardini emigrate from Rome, Italy, and plunge into life in America. It is a new life, new environment, with surprises.

Further chronicles of Pinky, Tango, Loaner, and sundry visitors.

A tortoiseshell kitten pursues me until we catch each other. This is also the story of Pinky's siblings and sundry other critters. Doubt no more -- cats have hearts and souls. Winner of the Animals Animals Animals Book Awards.

The Good Old Days in China are over by the time Rafaella turns eight. She knows war and privation as she breathes air. She is 18 when she and her parents reach Italy with almost no money. Her father dying, Rafaella finds herself head of the family. In Naples, they are shunted to a refugee relocation...

Long description: For Maria Conti and her family, this could mean death by starvation. Their only income is the little she earns from her share of a saloon catering to American and British servicemen. When they leave China, the business will go with them. The Contis get no rent from their tenants....

When Maggie Dalton finds a slaughtered black cockerel on her car, Tonia, her maid, says "Someone means you harm." Jon Dalton's affair with a Brazilian woman is skewing Maggie's soul. She broods on the occult. Beneath the surface of Rio de Janeiro's good life runs the cult of spiritism, brought...