JOHN IRVING CLARKE Chapter One Cassandra Jackson I love him to bits. Of course, I do. He’s absolutely gorgeous. Sometimes when he’s asleep I look at those lovely long eyelashes curling up and I watch his gentle breathing, the soft…
SILVANO GREGOLI Gaspare Lobino (pseudonym of Silvano Gregoli) took a step back and looked at his desk with a tired eye. The ancient behemoth had eight drawers, eight mouths full of notebooks of various sizes, scattered sheets of paper, old…
SILVIA PIO Born by the sea, she lived in a fisherman’s shack with her parents and a number of brothers and sisters, and by the sea she remained. During the day, she went down to the beach and sat with…
SILVIA PIO The morning they buried her husband, four men had to come and dig because the earth was hard as marble. It had been two days since he died. The sutrau, the sexton, had wanted to wait a bit…
SILVANO GREGOLI I recently witnessed two unusual events. Unusual in themselves, first; then doubly unusual because, although random in nature, they were mysteriously connected. The first event took place in the waiting room of a barbershop in Italy. As I…
SILVANO GREGOLI Exactly sixty years ago, on the morning of February 15, 1961, a total solar eclipse in Italy affected southern Piedmont, Liguria, part of Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany, northern Lazio, Umbria, Marche and Abruzzo. To find another total solar eclipse in…
JOHN IRVING CLARKE Every hour, as regular as the muezzin calling the faithful, the ferry rumbles in a wide arc across the bay. The engines grumble and the propellers expel a wash which slops loudly against the quayside walls. The…
