This is the Friday post, a weekly roundup of recommendations and delightful distractions. If the email cuts off, you can view it on the web by clicking the title ^.

Buongiorno! I know some of you may be in travel-planning mode and in need of a bit of inspiration. Today’s newsletter might help. I’m whisking you off to Italy for a big dose of la dolce vita. (Don’t worry, this is where my Italian stops.)

In today’s post, I recommend a fantastic new book by author Jo Piazza that the NYT delightfully calls “a journey to the boot of Italy, with murder, romance, and ricotta.” I simply can’t put this book down—so I caught up with Jo to talk about it and also get some of her best downtime recs. There’s a special roundup of links with a certain Italian flavor at the end. 🤌 Have a beautiful weekend.

❤️ Alisha

P.S. 📚 ICYMI: Our April book club pick is Come and Get It by Kiley Reid.

Just two big recommendations for you this week…

• Manhunt on Apple TV+. Stick with me here; I know I’ll lose many of you with this next sentence. Manhunt is about the aftermath of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln and the chase to find the perpetrator, actor John Wilkes Booth. It’s good. Really good. If you’re like, “I do not watch period pieces,” I get it. Neither does my husband, and he also loves it. The alternative title for Manhunt is, in my mind, CSI: 1865; a cat-and-mouse chase before fingerprinting was a thing. Its creator and showrunner, Monica Beletsky, was a writer on Fargo, so if you’re into that vibe, you may like this. Give it a shot (no pun intended).
  
  The show wastes no time with the set-up: in the first episode, the Union claims victory over the Confederacy, and we see the notorious assassination at Ford’s Theater. The story then unfolds more like a modern day crime procedural a la CSI. Edwin Stanton, the War Secretary (played by Emmy Award winner Tobiaz Menzies from The Crown and Outlander), uncovers the various clues that eventually lead him to find Booth, played by Anthony Doyle from Masters of the Air (iykyk 💘). A big part of the show depicts the national tensions that started the great war—the fight for and against slavery—and the real people impacted. Lovie Simone plays the role of Mary, a slave turned “house servant” who yearns for true freedom. (Simone is set to star in Forever, a Judy Blume adaptation!)

• The Sicilian Inheritance by Jo Piazza. If you need a fast-paced, twisty page-turner of a read that will whisk you away on an Italian adventure, this is it. The Sicilian Inheritance follows the story of Sara Marsala, a Philadelphia chef whose marriage and business have both failed. After her great-aunt Rosie passes and leaves her a mysterious note, Sara embarks on a journey to Sicily to uncover the story of her great-grandmother Serafina, who may have been murdered by the mafia, contrary to her family lore. The book flashes back to the early 1900s, giving us a look at Serafina’s perspective as a young mother trying to make her way.

  I’ve been gushing about this book to anyone who will listen. The wild part: the book is based on Jo Piazza’s real family history, the mysterious disappearance, and the potential murder of her great-great-grandmother, Lorenza Marsala. In fact, she just launched a podcast of the same name where she takes listeners along on her family vacation/fact-finding mission to Sicily to discover the truth and solve the mystery together. On Instagram, Jo shares videos of the breathtaking locations where scenes from the book are set. If you’re in a reading rut and want to be whisked away to another land, The Sicilian Inheritance, both the book and podcast companion, might be for you.

As a bestselling author, podcast creator, and award-winning journalist, Jo Piazza somehow manages to create the most entertaining and of-the-moment stuff. I caught up with Jo to talk about her latest book, The Sicilian Inheritance, an engrossing novel that I’m describing to friends as a “historical fiction murder mystery thriller slash romance.” —Alisha

Hi, Jo! Please tell us—what inspired your new book?

I have been thinking about this story for so long because it is based on the real-life murder of my great-great-grandmother in Sicily a century ago. She was left behind when my great-great-grandfather came to America, and she never made it here. It is a story that has been a 100-year-long game of telephone. Everyone in my family has a different version of it.

I based the novel on what it would be like to be a woman left behind, to suddenly not have to be a wife, to take on a job outside of the home, and to also be in constant danger from the nefarious mafia bandits in Sicily. I was inspired by real-life stories of women who learned to read and write for the first time and began buying and selling land on their own. When a million men left Sicily for America, there were entire villages that were mostly women, and that felt like a feminist slice of history that I had never seen written about.

[The present-day protagonist of the novel, Sara,] is a modern woman that I thought many of us would find relatable. She wants everything: a career, a family, and agency over her own life, and the pressure of it all is breaking her down.

What do you wish more people knew about your book or the process of writing it?

I wanted this book to be delicious in all of the ways. It’s filled with food and travel and wine and I want people to devour it with food. I wrote all of the food parts from a restaurant in Sicily while asking random people to describe the food for me. I ate it all, and I want you to literally taste it as you read it. The best description one guy said to me is “It tastes like eating the ocean!”

What do you hope readers will take away from the book?

The book is an adventure and a murder mystery, and it is also fun. But it is also about women’s ambition and women who want more than the world is willing to give them. It is about women lifting up other women and helping them get what they deserve. Come for the ambitious women and the dose of Big Sicilian Energy and confidence, but stay for the sex in a beach grotto and the never-ending pasta.

What are your favorite foods in Sicily (and beyond)?

I am a woman who will literally travel to eat. One of my favorite things about Sicily is how unapologetic everyone is about their love of food. Instead of asking you what you do for a living, the first thing anyone asks you is, “What did you have for lunch?” Which, frankly, is the more important question.

I love going to restaurants in Sicily that have no menu. They just bring you all of the things. I adore a squid ink pasta. I love a black boar ragu. I could eat their risotto with crushed almonds and pistachios all day long. The arancine rice balls stuffed with mozzarella are the perfect quickie snack, and I make a lot of them while I am writing to eat for lunch. The Sicilians have taught me to smother everything in olive oil, and frankly, my life is better for it.

What’s your current food or snack obsession?

Ok, since writing The Sicilian Inheritance, I have been eating a lot of cannoli, and I make my own filling with whole milk ricotta, powdered sugar, and crushed pistachio…but the shells are often too heavy, so now I make myself ricotta toast every day with the cannoli filling. It feels decadent but also like breakfast.

What’s the best thing you’ve read in the past year?

Saying the best thing is always so hard…for me, the BEST is the one that I think about a lot, and I have to say that is We All Want Impossible Things by Catherine Newman. It is such a gorgeous short novel and I gift it to friends all the time.

Something that’s made you happy or laugh recently?

I watched the third season of The Other Two on the plane back from my last trip to Sicily, and I snort laughed SO HARD.

What’s your little luxury—something that perhaps doesn’t cost much (or anything at all) but gives you an inordinate amount of joy?

I pick daisies and Queen Anne’s lace and any other random roadside flower and put them in a tiny vase by my bed and I love them.

What’s a smart idea you’ve come across recently and/or have implemented?

The first thing that comes to mind is singing the praises of Costco underwear, but the other thing is midday sex with my husband. We both work from home and usually pretend the other doesn’t exist, but finding a way to sneak in doing it in the middle of the day takes the pressure off date nights and lets us actually enjoy the other person when we aren’t exhausted from performing the opera necessary to put three children to bed.

What’s a little luxury that feels like a big luxury to you?

BATHROBES. I have a crazy soft and delightful one from Target and it reminds me of being in a luxury hotel and also being taken care of.

Thanks, Jo Piazza ! You can order THE SICILIAN INHERITANCE on Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, or your local bookstore. You can follow Jo on Instagram @jopiazzaauthor.

Downtime Recs, Italian Edition 🤌

I was inspired—let’s continue this Italian party.

1. A luxurious Roma tomato hand soap.

2. Al dente t-shirt. 🍝

3. The definition of little luxury: scented wax tablets for your closet made in Italy.

4. Sicilian caponata!

5. The dress I’d wear all over Italy this spring…if I were going to Italy this spring (size goes to 3X). Or this one if you’re fancy (size goes to XXL).

6. Food of the Italian Islands by Katie Parla.

7. Lucy Laucht’s Il Dolce Far Niente, a beautiful photography book about the “Italian way of summer,” is out in June.

8. A cannoli recipe to try. Tempted to make just the filling and eat it on toast, like Jo recommended. *NYT gift link

No reads today since this newsletter’s quite long. Next week, I’m featuring a fantastic new Italian cookbook and a recipe excerpted from it exclusively for subscribers. Thanks for reading, and have a lovely weekend. x Alisha