A Year In Tuscany

A comic novel set in the scenic Tuscan hills.

When the Duke of Grambörg announces over breakfast that he will sell the old family villa in the Tuscan hills to move to New York, his family is in uproar.

Where on earth will his beautiful daughters, the contessas Claudia and Hanna, live – now they no longer have the family seat?

And that, as it turns out, is just the beginning of the escapades that ensue after the old Danish duca makes his life-changing decision.

Will local poor boy-turned rich man, Osvaldo Cipollina, find a way to buy the villa?

Hopelessly in love with Hanna, will he ever manage to persuade her to see past his humble beginnings, not to mention his dubiously acquired wealth, and return his feelings?

Will the haughty Claudia ever be reconciled with her aristocratic husband: Lord Eastcliffe?

With a cast of characters as rich as a medieval tapestry, there is just no knowing what will happen next in this finely tuned comic novel.

From Lo Strapazzato – “The Scrambled One” – who is a little too fond of arson, to the international diamond smuggler with a taste for fine wines, to the mysterious American cousin of Osvaldo’s who arrives wearing a veil – everyone in this corner of Italy, it seems, has a secret.

That’s not to mention a sultry belle from the American deep south, an Australian crooner, and, at the heart of it all, the perfect sunshine of the Tuscan countryside.

A Year In Tuscany is a delightful story that will appeal to lovers of the English comic novel.


Praise for Annie Ayre’s first novel After the Ball Was Over:

“A fine comic novel…One hears in Kingsland bits of Dickens, Waugh, and the British playwright Peter Barnes…Within this short novel is a comic distillation of the British adventure in India.” — The Cleveland Plain Dealer

“A wicked little comic novel set in Jamalpur, India…a delightfully silly cooler to bring down some of the recent Raj fever” — Kirkus Reviews

“After the Ball Was Over perches atop such classics as A Passage to India and The Jewel in the Crownlike the mustache that Magritte painted on the Mona Lisa.” — Los Angeles Times

Annie Ayre was born and educated in India. She has worked in London as a journalist and screenwriter, lived in Tuscany for three years, before moving to Fairview, Tennessee. Other novels include A Saint among Savages, and, for children, Treasure Islands. She wrote under the pen name Rosemary Kingsland.

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