"Marco Carrera is 'the hummingbird,' a man with an almost supernatural ability to remain still amid the chaos of an ever-changing world. Though his life is rife with emotional challenges-suffering the death of his sister and the absence of his brother; caring for his elderly parents; raising his granddaughter when her mother, Marco's own child, is no longer capable; loving an enigmatic woman-Marco carries on with a noble stoicism that belies an intensity...

The year is 1327. Franciscans in a wealthy Italian abbey are suspected of heresy, and Brother William of Baskerville arrives to investigate. His delicate mission is suddenly overshadowed by seven bizarre deaths that take place in seven days and nights of apocalyptic terror. The body of one monk is found in a cask of pigs' blood, another is floating in a bathhouse, still another is crushed at the foot of a cliff.

"A thirteen-year-old boy spending the summer at a Tuscan seaside resort feels displaced in his beautiful widowed mother's affections by her cocksure new companion and strays into the company of some local young toughs and their unsettling leader, a fleshy older boatman with six fingers on each hand. Initially repelled by their squalor and brutality, repeatedly humiliated for his well-bred frailty and above all for his ingenuousness in matters of women...

"One spring afternoon Lorenza, a former lover of Guerrieri, shows up in his office. Her son Jacopo stands convicted of the first-degree murder of a local drug dealer. For the appeal, Lorenza turns to Guerrieri. But he is not convinced of the innocence of Lorenza's son, nor does he have fond memories of how their relationship ended two decades earlier. Nevertheless, he accepts the case; perhaps to pay a melancholy homage to the ghosts of his youth....

"Inspired by true events, [this novel] tells the story of a Jewish family and their community during the Fascist regime in Italy, when Benito Mussolini introduced his draconian race laws. Culminating with the tragic outbreak of World War II, Levi's novel of loss and courage recounts the history of mid-century Europe through the eyes and lives of ordinary people living in extraordinary times."--Back cover.

Story of an unemployed man and his son in war devastated Rome. The father finds a job pasting up posters, work requiring a bicycle to get around. The bicycle is stolen; panic stricken at being unable to recover his bicycle and at the prospect of losing his job, the father is compelled to steal a bicycle, only to be caught and humiliated in front of his son.