I never expected to dance until 4 am with my adult daughter. Divorced the same year I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I survived more than a decade of single motherhood. Now I savor every moment of fun and travel as often as I can Recently my 23-year-ol

As obsessed as I am with art in all its forms, sometimes I need a break from Botticelli and Brunelleschi when I’m in Florence. To escape the crowds at the more mainstream museums in this Renaissance-mad city, I love focusing on the rich contemporary art s

The crisp stucco houses of Parma sport a cheery shade of yellow - a lemony hue a bit more lively than egg yolk and a touch happier than mustard. As I walk Via Garibaldi, the brilliant color abounds. Store windows on every corner display enormous wheels of Parmigiano-Reggiano, the gold standard by which all cheese is measured.

Lucrezia Borgia is long overdue for a makeover -- six centuries overdue, to be exact. Born the illegitimate daughter of Pope Alexander VI and married off by the time she was 13, the 15th century temptress has been synonymous in the history books with murder, incest and High Renaissance papal intrigue.

I’ve been waiting a long time for “The Italian Lover,” and, believe me, it’s about time Robert Hellenga got around to writing it. It has been 12 years since the novel “The Sixteen Pleasures” kept me up on a two-day reading binge as I obsessed over the story of American abroad Margot Harrington and the centuries-old book of erotic drawings she uncovered in a convent.

Is Salman Rushdie the last of the great international literary playboys? Followers of gossip pages will answer yes, but for a truly steamy love story, readers should instead turn to the lively author's latest novel. Dante had his unattainable Beatrice and Petrarch his elusive Laura, but in "The Enchantress of Florence" (Random House, 368 pages, $26) Rushdie proves that an earthy author demands a hot-blooded heroine audacious enough to rival even history's greatest seductresses.

In my experience, children will look at Venetian art as long as you want them to if there’s a dead saint’s body involved and the promise of unlimited gelato. Eight years before this bone-and-ice cream fantasy could come to fruition, I was lying in a Kansa

THE YEAR WAS 1984 and I was 14 years old. Raised by kind, gentle people, I was poorly prepared for the monochromatic hellscape of junior high. Reacting as I always did when faced with anything unpleasant, I escaped into the emotional bomb shelter of books. Then I discovered Orwell. My class was in the unique position of reading Nineteen Eighty-Four in the year 1984.

Italy can be expensive but with these travel tips, you can afford to go there not once, but TWICE a year. For many in the know, the key to a happy life is to never stop planning your next trip to Italy. Banish the idea you must be wealthy to make your Ita

I'll just come right out and say it: "Laura" isn't for everyone. If you are looking for a traditional literary novel you can throw in your overnight bag and plow through on a plane ride, "Laura" is not your book. Auto-pilot readers seeking a predictable narrative arc may be dismayed by this "novel" by Vladimir Nabokov, only now being published 28 years after his death.

Who says Lucrezia Borgia had all the fun? With a life marked by Machiavellian plot twists, Felice della Rovere is experiencing a rebirth through an absorbing new biography by UC Riverside Professor Caroline P. Murphy, "The Pope's Daughter." Murphy's tirelessly researched look at the illegitimate daughter of Pope Julius II proves that Borgia wasn't the only papal "princess" of Renaissance Rome worthy of study.

who needs them? Joelle Fraser's memoir, The Territory of Men, tries to answer the question on the minds of millions of women on any given day. Throughout her childhood in the '60s, Fraser's flower-child mother never felt complete without a man around. After her parents split, the shy Joelle was dragged from Sausalito flophouses and leaky San Francisco houseboats to late-'60s nudist colonies while her mother looked for love.

Instead of seeing his own reflection, Oliver is jarred from his bitter loneliness by a messenger boy in his own likeness. " 'We call you, O King.... Come to battle! Bring your sword!' " the apparition demands. Oliver is perplexed by this message, but from the vantage point of his intense isolation he feels he can't ignore the specter's entreaties.

The striking book jacket for Jenny McPhee's latest novel pictures two sisters balancing alongside each other, high on a trapeze. This image is the perfect metaphor for the protagonists of "No Ordinary Matter," (The Free Press, 256 pages, $23) but one that can be readily applied to all sisters who support each other through life's precarious ups and downs.

Even as you nod along while a heartbroken friend recounts their latest tale of lost love, you just know you have them beat. We've all heard the basic plotlines. There are garden-variety cheaters, lovers who go poof! in the night, credit-ruiners, narcissists and jerks. And do not misunderstand -- all of those stories will do in a pinch.

Debra Monroe is accustomed to the questions. After all, any white woman who adopts a black infant might expect to encounter a few raised eyebrows here and there. Monroe, a Wisconsin native, brought the babe-in-arms from the hospital to her then-home in a small Texan town. A white woman raising a black child was big news in those parts.