Winner of an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation

"No one in the world . . . can tell a story better than Gioia Timpanelli."--Frank McCourt, author of Angela's Ashes

"Gioia Timpanelli's novellas . . . offer simple lessons about the nature of beauty and the beauty of nature . . . in rich, incantatory language." -- The New York Times Book Review

A renowned storyteller who has beguiled audiences around the world offers these mesmerizing novella-length fables about two young women and the transformative power of art. In "A Knot of Tears," a baroness locks herself up in the Green Palace, only to have her seclusion interrupted by a parrot that flies through the window. When a sailor arrives to retrieve his companion, the young man and his pet delight her with three inspiring stories, while an unscrupulous suitor schemes to lure her out of her house and into his arms. In "Rusina, Not Quite in Love," Timpanelli recasts "Beauty and the Beast" as the tale of a loving young heroine who escapes her poor family to live at the estate of Signor Sebastiano. A devastatingly ugly man who prefers plants to people, Sebastiano leads Rusina to the true meaning of beauty. Lyrical, enchanting, wise, these timeless stories are, in the words of the baroness, "simple, but not so simple," as they enlighten readers about the virtues of love, solitude, and art.

"Gioia Timpanelli's stories . . . are dreams . . . and these dreams, in the skill of their telling, lead us back to ourselves." -- The Boston Globe

"This is brilliant writing . . . [that] changes tales into fresh literature . . . by the passion of an educated person for the great things in life: plants, works of art, talk at dinner, and devotion." --Robert Bly