Pasquale's Nose Idle Days in an Italian Town

Everywhere hailed for its quirkiness, its hilarity, its charm, PASQUALE'S NOSE tells the story of a New York City lawyer who runs away to a small Etruscan village with his wife and new baby, and discovers a community of true eccentrics--warring bean growers, vanishing philosophers, a blind bootmaker, a porcupine hunter--among whom he feels unexpectedly at home. . A book of odd delights--great reading for the armchair traveler. . A tonic for readers who find Peter Mayle's Provence and Frances Mayes's Tuscany lacking in spice.

Michael Rips, a fifth-generation Nebraskan, currently lives in the Chelsea Hotel in New York City.