The Villa Girls

When Nicky Pellegrino's Italian father came to England he fell in love with and married a Liverpool girl. He brought to his new family his passion for food and instilled in them what all Italians know - that you live to eat instead of eating to live. This Italian mantra is the inspiration behind Nicky's delicious novels. Every summer the family left their home in Merseyside and returned to her father's home town, near Naples, in southern Italy. When Nicky met and married a New Zealander she moved to Auckland where she works as a journalist and edits a woman's magazine. She hordes her annual leave so that she and her husband can return to Italy to meet up with her family and to eat the best mozzarella and research her books.

"Pulls off the rare trick of being both gritty and lyrical, heartrending and compelling. A novel about how easy it is to become an observer in your own life, and the joy of learning to live again. It also made me very hungry!" --Jojo Moyes, author, "The Last Letter from Your Love"