Under the Tuscan Sun started out as a memoir. Written by Frances Mayes and published in 1996, the book of the same name documented the author’s journey of renovating an abandoned Tuscan villa with her ...

I came across Frances Mayes’ “Bella Tuscany” this spring and read just a few lines to remember how beguiled I was by her first memoir on the subject. I have heard Mayes’ prose dismissed as something ...

CORTONA, Italy -- It's a hot, steamy and sun-soaked day in August, and Frances Mayes is precisely where you think you'd find her: under Tuscany's sun, lounging in the villa and lifestyle she made so ...

“Pasta’s cardinal virtue? Speed!” writes Frances Mayes in her newest book, Pasta Veloce: Irresistibly Fast Recipes from Under the Tuscan Sun. “Many tasty dinners can be prepared in the time it takes ...

In her most recent Tuscan tour, Mayes conducts readers through the gentle and sometimes violent and disruptive undulations of the seasons from winter to summer in her Tuscan home of Bramasole. In this ...

The villa that was featured in the 2003 movie "Under the Tuscan Sun" — which fed filmgoer fantasies of buying and restoring an Italian countryside villa — is being sold by a couple who owns a Sonoma ...