Anthony Capella – författare

It is 1895. Robert Wallis, would-be poet, bohemian and impoverished dandy, accepts a commission from coffee merchant Samuel Pinker to categorise the different tastes of coffee - and encounters Pinker''s free-thinking daughters, Philomenia, Ada and Emily. As romance blossoms with Emily, Robert realises that the Muse and marriage may not be incompatible after all. Sent to Abyssinia to make his fortune in the coffee trade, he becomes obsessed with a negro slave girl, Fikre. He decides to use the money he has saved to buy her from her owner - a decision that will change not only his own life, but the lives of the three Pinker sisters . . .

Twenty-two-year-old James Gould arrives in Occupied Naples in 1943, where his duties include dissuading Allied soldiers from marrying their beautiful Italian girlfriends, and his diet includes little more than spam fritters and warmed-up rations.

The girls of Naples, however, soon arrange for a beautiful young country girl to join his staff as a cook. Under the twin influences of Italian food and Italian passion, James has only just realised that his heart is more important than his orders, when an eruption of Vesuvius sets in motion a series of epic events that will change their lives for ever.

1671. Carlo Demirco is the only man in the world who knows how to make ice cream. As confectioner to Louis XIV, his talents are kept a closely guarded secret and his dishes served up for the King''s pleasure only. But Carlo has fallen hopelessly in love with Louise de Keroualle, an impoverished lady-in-waiting to Henrietta d''Angleterre, sister of Charles II of England. When Henrietta dies suddenly, Louise and Carlo''s lives are changed irrevocably when they are sent to London.

It quickly becomes clear that Charles II wants Louise as his mistress. There ensues a famous rivalry between Louise and the king''s other mistress, the cockney actress Nell Gwyn. But Carlo is heartbroken. The only power he has left to wield is through his exquisite ice cream confections ... Where will his loyalties lie? Will he seek his revenge?

Laura Patterson is an American exchange student in Rome who, fed up with being inexpertly groped by her young Italian beaus, decides there''s only one sure-fire way to find a sensual man: date a chef. Then she meets Tomasso, who''s handsome, young -- and cooks in the exclusive Templi restaurant. Perfect. Except, unbeknownst to Laura, Tomasso is in fact only a waiter at Templi -- it''s his shy friend Bruno who is the chef.But Tomasso is the one who knows how to get the girls, and when Laura comes to dinner he persuades Bruno to help him with the charade. It works: the meal is a sensual feast, Laura is utterly seduced and Tomasso falls in lust. But it is Bruno, the real chef who has secretly prepared every dish Laura has eaten, who falls deeply and unrequitedly in love. A delicious tale of Cyrano de Bergerac-style culinary seduction, but with sensual recipes instead of love poems.