I published my first novel in 2017, but I was writing and working on publishing it for the better part of 7-8 years. I was lucky enough to be part of an independent writing community of people who were interested in writing and publishing, but for the most part hadn’t yet. Fast forward to 2025, and the vast majority of those same people have books (and often more than one!) out in the world. It’s a pretty stunning thing to be part of. The number of published authors I personally know is something I could never have imagined back then.
I love writing, and I love getting my books into the hands of readers and seeing my books on the shelves, but I also really love, maybe more than anything else, connecting with other people who have these imaginary worlds in their heads and finding ways to put them down on the page.
Which is why I am so thrilled to share with you 21 books that have been published in the last six and a half months or will be published in the next few weeks. These books cross genres, but they are all stunning and worth a read, and the lucky thing is that you have a chance to win all 21 of these! Each author has agreed to put a book into the prize pile, and all you have to do is click through to learn about the books and find out how to enter. You have 21 chances to win by following various actions, and on July 1, we’ll choose one lucky winner to win all 21 of these books. The whole stack is worth nearly $500!
I’ve read nearly all of these, and I can tell you, the winner is SO in for a treat!
The longest day of the year lands on June 21, but in Italy the real action comes a few nights later, on the eve of San Giovanni. Fire, witches, snails, and a liqueur you won’t open until winter. Here is what the Italians have always done with the solstice.
Solstice comes from the Latin sol and sistere, the sun standing still. For a few days around June 21, the sun rises and sets at almost the same point on the horizon before it reverses and heads south again. To anyone watching the sky without a calendar, it looked like the sun had simply stopped. For readers wanting the physical science behind the illusion, Time and Date’s guide to the December and June Solstices provides an excellent astronomical breakdown.
Every culture around the Mediterranean lit fires at midsummer, so when the Church needed a Christian feast for the date, it set the birth of John the Baptist on June 24, six months before Christmas. The pagan night underneath never disappeared. It picked up a new name, la notte delle streghe, the night of the witches, and people believed Salome and Herodias flew over Rome toward the great walnut tree at Benevento. To keep them off, you rang cowbells and set a broom across the threshold to trip them up. The fires burned all night. To explore how these pagan rites morphed into Catholic celebrations, Abruzzissimo Magazine’s detailed cultural exploration of the San Giovanni Celebrations in Italy, highlights the bonfires, witch legends, and herbal water rituals.
On the eve of San Giovanni, the piazza in front of the basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano filled with Romans eating snails by the bowlful, gathered from the vineyards after the spring rains. The reasons were superstitious. A snail’s horns looked like a devil’s, and an older belief held that the snail carried the year’s quarrels on its back, so eating one let you swallow a grudge and start clean. The dish survives as lumache alla romana, and you can still order it near the basilica at the end of June. The sauce it comes in now, tomato and chili, arrived from the New World centuries after the custom did. If you want to make your own, Saveur has a good recipe.
There is a softer ritual for the same night. At dusk, women gather flowers and herbs, hypericum and lavender and rosemary and mint, and leave them soaking in a basin of water outdoors so the dew settles into it overnight. This is Acqua di San Giovanni. You wash your face and hands with it on the morning of the 24th, and it is meant to guard you through the year against sickness and the evil eye. People still make it. It smells like a garden right after rain.
Go north into Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany, and the night belongs to walnuts. You pick the green ones while they are still soft enough to cut with a knife, before the dew dries on the morning of the 24th. Tradition says twenty-four of them, one for each day of the month leading up to the feast. You steep them whole in alcohol with sugar and spices and put the jar away until winter, when it has gone dark and bitter, and you pour it after dinner. The liqueur is nocino, and the women who made it kept their proportions secret. It’s one of my absolute favorite liqueurs, and if you see it on a menu as a digestivo, dive on in.
Also, Elizabeth Minchilli is here on Substack, and she’s really worth a follow!
In the logic of the myth, midsummer is the height of Persephone’s months above ground. She came back from the underworld in spring; her mother, Demeter, let the earth grow again, and by the solstice, the abundance is at full tilt. The long descent toward winter is still half a year off. The Greeks tied her to spring and autumn rather than to the solstice itself, but the day when the light begins to fail is a fitting one for thinking about a goddess who must return to the Underworld. If you haven’t read my post about the Sicilian roots (not Greek!) of this goddess, here you go.
Surviving a Roman summer meant cold drinks, and the cold came down off the Apennines on muleback. Crews cut mountain snow, packed it in straw, and ran it to the city in a relay before it could melt. It went into pits called nivaria, where the ice that compacted at the bottom sold for more than the loose snow on top, sometimes more than the wine it was meant to chill. Seneca thought the whole habit was decadent. They kept doing it. If you are ever in Urbino, you can see a nivaria at the Palazzo Ducale.
myretrotvs.com OMG this is giving me SO much joy. You can watch TV from past eras! Seriously, so much blast from the past. Also, bonus points for you if you recognize Alphaville in this clip.
famelack - When Joe and I are traveling, we love to watch music video channels from other countries, or flip to the weird sitcoms or badly dubbed old American shows. Now we can watch all sorts of free TV from anywhere in the world!
This video made me SO happy!
If you love food and love Italy, and haven’t read IN THE GARDEN OF MONSTERS, THE CHEF’S SECRET, or FEAST OF SORROW, click the links to learn where to buy your copy! And now you can order my latest, THE HAPPINESS COLLECTOR!
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