When Mona Lisa smiled enigmatically from the cover of the Italian magazine Epoca in 1957, she gazed out at more than three million readers. As Emma Barron argues, her appearance on the cover is emblematic of the distinctive ways that high culture was integrated into Italy's mass culture boom in the 1950s and 1960s, a period when popular appropriations of literature, fine art and music became a part of the rapidly changing modern Italian identity. Popular magazines ran weekly illustrated adaptations of literary classics. Television brought opera from the opera house into the homes of millions. Readers wrote to intellectuals and artists such as Alberto Moravia, Thomas Mann and Salvatore Quasimodo by the thousands with questions about literature and self-education. Drawing upon new archival material on the demographics of television audiences and magazine readers, this book is an engaging account of how the Italian people took possession of high culture and transformed the modern Italian identity.

Orphan Adele Beaumont spent her childhood being passed around to cruel or indifferent relatives. She quickly learned the harsh lesson that a fatherless, penniless girl becomes an unmarriageable woman, leaving her alone and vulnerable to the whims of society. Determined to take charge of her own fate, Del decides to pursue the only means to an independent life available to her: become a courtesan to wealthy and powerful men.

Rhys Camden has just turned twenty-one and is now employed as factotum in his father's shipping company. He is eager to find his place in the world, but he finds himself fighting against his father's control as the elder Camden seeks to increase the family's social standing to match their newfound wealth.

After a chance meeting on a foggy street, Del's and Camden's lives become increasingly intertwined. Their passion for each other ignites and, realizing there can be no true freedom without love, they vow to defy society and family and risk everything to be together. But they soon learn how dangerous that defiance can be.

"Sensuality Level: Sensual"

Rachel Hoffman is a smart and talented economics journalist, but a lay-off forces her to take a job with a NYC gossip magazine to make ends meet. When she's assigned to spend a week with Leo Hanlon, the intensely private CEO of a private jet company, she assumes it will be just another run-of-the mill interview. The one thing she doesn't know: her boss has led the notoriously press-shy Leo to believe the resulting story will be a business profile, not a gossip article. Leo Hanlon hates doing publicity, but with his company still reeling from a PR nightmare, he knows he can't afford to say no to what he believes is a write-up in a major economics magazine. As they jet from the high rises of Manhattan to the sandy beaches of a tropical island, Rachel and Leo realize the simple business agreement is developing into something far more complicated. They can't deny their mutual attraction, but similar past tragedies have left them both reluctant to share their hearts with anyone. Can they overcome their fears to find happiness together? Or will the discovery of someone else's lie tear them apart forever?