Books by Members

Tuscan Tales Translated and edited by Lori Hetherington

Tuscan Tales: the fantastic fables of Emma Perodi originates from a classic work of late 19th-century literature for children that has charmed Italians for over a century but has remained, until this translation, unknown to English-language readers. Set in an enchanted forest an hour’s drive east of Florence where mysticism runs riot and religion fuels the imagination, the tales transport modern readers to a time and place where scoundrels and saints, supernatural events, and magical objects appear in the Tuscan countryside. 

Quality print editions with line drawings can be purchased at Paperback Exchange in Florence (in-store or online); ebook or print-on-demand copies (link).

Intermezzo: Short Story collection by Lauren Mouat

The stories in this collection center on moments of change, of crossing the threshold, of going through the gate. Some characters experience the fragmentation of making a home in a foreign land, speaking new languages, of falling into or out of love, or of growing up. The parallel text itself is a reminder that there’s always another way to see the world and to tell a story.

I racconti presenti in questa raccolta sono incentrati su momenti di cambiamento, del valicare una soglia, passare oltre un cancello. Alcuni personaggi sperimentano la frammentazione che creare una casa in terra straniera comporta. Alcuni si innamorano o si disamorano. Altri crescono. Il testo a fronte ci ricorda che c’è sempre un altro modo per vedere il mondo e di raccontare una storia.

Available in Florence at the Paperback Exchange. Can be ordered from any Italian publisher or online here.

Messages from Florence by Melinda Gallo

Messages from Florence is part travelogue, part memoir, and part photography collection. Impromptu photographs and accompanying anecdotes illustrate how the city of Florence “whispered messages” to her about living a more present and open-hearted life. The book documents the author’s personal transformation while living as an American expat in Florence after her job in Paris ended. While meandering through the city’s gardens, running along the Arno, or watching a sunset, she captures inspired and unplanned moments with her iPhone.

You can purchase it at the Paperback Exchange in Florence, via Amazon US or Amazon Italy or directly in the US or the UK.

Hiding the Flame by Angela M Sims

Francesca Rosini has always lived in the glow of great art. In the workshop of her family’s friend, Sandro Botticelli, she finds a world of colour, light and possibility – a world denied to women. Her days are divided between the hospital wards, where she tends the sick, and the palazzo, where her family plans a marriage to secure their legacy. But Francesca’s heart will soon be lost – not to the man chosen for her, but to a woman whose presence ignites a passion as dangerous as it is forbidden. As the preacher Savonarola’s power tightens its grip on Florence, beauty itself comes under threat. Caught between duty and desire, faith and freedom, Francesca must decide: will she preserve the life she’d been given, or risk everything to protect the art, the love, and the truth she cannot live without? Rich with the scent of linseed oil and the sound of church bells, Hiding the Flame is a story of forbidden love, artistic longing, and the courage defy the darkness.

Hiding the Flame is Angela’s second book based in Renaissance Florence. Her first book, The Rose of Florence, is set twenty years before this story takes place. While both books stand alone, there are some of the same characters in both, linking the stories together. Available on Amazon. Angela M Sims (Author website)

Venus Pluto, Letters to Lost Lovers – By Martha Clarke

Venus-Pluto was inspired by the death of her late daughter Ruth’s father, David Seavers, in late 2017. Martha is Venus square Pluto in her natal chart, which symbolises when she loves (Venus), she is therefore deeply transformed (Pluto).

This book was written in the hope that it will inspire readers to transform their own lives through astrology. Martha is Sun Moon and Mercury in Gemini, and is also Gemini Rising. She was born in Dublin on 27th May 1960 at 6.05 am and was raised by a highly Aquarian separated mother, unheard of in Ireland at the time. Available on Amazon.

Widdershins: Uncanny healing in Edinburgh by L. A. Robbins

When he leaves his two-year-old in the Tesco shopping trolley, Robin MacFarlane knows he needs help. A middle-aged Scotsman, he juggles teaching and the upbringing of his children after the unexpected death of his wife. Morag McCoul, the family’s new nanny, unpacks alternative paraphernalia from her carpet bag, spellbinding the children and terrifying Robin’s conventional relatives. McCoul works her magic on an emotional level while sister Fiona’s chiropractor offers solutions to Robin’s chronic back pain. Edinburgh in the first decade of the millennium provides the rich, textured backdrop of this bittersweet tale of grief and rekindling of meaning: It puts a New Age spin on historic tradition in the world’s first UNESCO City of Literature.

Available on Amazon.

Act As If: Live Your Truth. Heal Your Life. Change the World by DeEnna Holohan

Act As If: Live Your Truth. Heal Your Life. Change the World is an upcoming book, currently in editing, that weaves together personal storytelling and practical guidance for deep, lasting transformation. Drawing from her own experience of walking through a profound “dark night of the soul,” DeEnna Holohan explores what it means to shed inherited identities, release limiting beliefs, and reconnect with the truth of who we are beneath conditioning.

At its core, the book offers a grounded, accessible approach to healing—inviting readers to “act as if” they are already aligned with their highest self, and in doing so, begin to reshape their lives from the inside out. Through themes of self-worth, emotional healing, and conscious living, DeEnna shows how personal transformation doesn’t just change an individual life—it ripples outward to impact families, communities, and the collective.

Blending memoir with insight, Act As If speaks to anyone ready to step out of survival mode and into a more intentional, soul-led life. To receive updates, learn more, or inquire about keynote speaking opportunities, visit www.deennaholohan.com.

Il Tema di Ethna by Anna Bertini

Ethna Sarfatti – a cellist and music professor born in Dublin and raised in Florence, where her father moved the family to take a teaching position at the International School of Florence – intends to separate from her husband and retreats in 1997 to the Castello di Sonnino, a striking hotel overlooking the sea. The place was recommended to her by Horace Gibson, founder of the school she attended and a close friend of her family, the International School of Florence. ISF real founder
Gibson (1918-2016) is one of the prominent figures of the plot of this fictional story.

In 2004, travelling by train in the Sonnino Area, she sees the hotel again and, on instinct, decides to return there. She comes up with the idea of beginning to write the story of what she has experienced since her first stay there and she begins to compose the pages of her biography: from the death of her father to the discovery that she is not his biological daughter, from the love affair of her parents to the plethora of characters who have been a part of her experiences; among them the eclectic Gibson, who plays a key role in her choices.

The Maiden of Florence by Katherine Mezzacappa

A Renaissance #MeToo, based on real events, The Maiden of Florence tells the story of a twenty-year-old girl taken from a Dominican-run orphanage in Florence in 1584 to serve as a virility test for the heir to the dukedom of Mantua, enabling him to make a dynastic marriage with a Medici princess. Here her story is told for the first time from her point of view. The Maiden of Florence was shortlisted for the Historical Writers’ Association Gold Award in 2025.

Katherine Mezzacappa is an Irish writer of mainly historical fiction, long resident in Carrara. She is the author of ten novels under three different names and twenty of her short stories have been published in journals worldwide. She reviews regularly for the Historical Novel Society and serves on the executive committee of the Irish Writers Union.

Cover design by Holly Ovenden.