Whether writing a cookbook or a family saga, Adriana Trigiani includes her Italian-American heritage as a central theme. The indefatigable author of sixteen bestselling books, Trigiani has published a novel every year since 2000, and she has just released two more: her new novel, Kiss Carlo, a family epic set in post-war Philadelphia; and a revised edition of her popular cookbook, Cooking with My Sisters. Both uniquely celebrate and wrestle with heritage.

Her grandmother’s scrapbook inspired Trigiani’s ambitious new novel, described by Kirkus Review as “a delightfully sprawling comedy full of extended families, in all their cocooning warmth and suffocating expectations.” Set in South Philadelphia in 1949, Kiss Carlo is a story full of possibility. It recounts the interwoven lives of the Palazzini family with great depth, scope, and humor, finding its characters torn between convention and reinvention, resentment and loyalty, dependability and risking it all. Family secrets brew alongside the passionate interior lives of its characters. Dense in emotion and rich in detail, Trigiani says  that writing Kiss Carlo was the most creatively intense experience of her life.

Originally published in 2005, Trigiani’s Cooking with My Sisters: One Hundred Years of Family Recipes has just been released in a brand new edition. A collaboration with her sister Mary Yolanda Trigiani, the book delightfully blends more than 80 family recipes, some over 150 years old, with incredible family anecdotes from Grandmas Lucy Bonicelli and Viola Trigiani (who was known to write her recipes in code). Beginning and expert cooks alike will delight in whipping up Happy IBM (Italian-by-Marriage) Husband Salad—or, perhaps the Tipsy Lady from Flicksville’s Ice Box Cake better suits the occasion.

Adriana Trigiani is the author of the blockbuster epic The Shoemaker’s Wife and the bestselling memoir Don’t Sing at the Table. She is the award-winning filmmaker of the documentary Queens of the Big Time. She also wrote and directed the major motion picture Big Stone Gap, based on her debut novel and filmed in her hometown in Virginia. She lives in Greenwich Village with her family.