Otto Ringling is a straightlaced publishing executive with two kids, a lovely wife, a fine home in a fancy New York suburb, and a nagging suspicion that something's missing. How, then, does he end up traveling through Middle America with a berobed Mongolian monk? Ah. The real question to ask is, Why?

When his sister tricks him into taking her guru on a trip to their childhood home, Otto, a confirmed skeptic, is not amused. Six days on the road with an enigmatic holy man who answers every question with a riddle is not what he'd planned. But in an effort to westernize his passenger--and amuse himself--he decides to show the monk some American fun along the way. From a chocolate factory in Hershey to a bowling alley in South Bend, from a Cubs game at Wrigley Field to his family farm near Bismarck, Otto is given the remarkable opportunity to see his world--and more important, his life--through someone else's eyes. Gradually, skepticism yields to amazement as he realizes that his companion might just be the real thing.

In Roland Merullo's masterful hands, Otto tells his story with all the wonder, bemusement, and wry humor of a man who unwittingly finds what he's missing in the most unexpected place.

Dessert with Buddha takes the eccentric monk, Volya Rinpoche, and his skeptical, brother-in-law, Otto, on another enlightening road trip filled with meals, humor, social commentary, and good times. The couple that traveled from New York to North Dakota in Breakfast with Buddha, Seattle to North Dakota in Lunch, and North Dakota to Vegas in Dinner heads from Boston to points south. They meet an array of intriguing characters--from a former NBA star to a Holocaust survivor, from an A.M.E. preacher to a hedge fund executive, from a Syrian refugee to a homeless North Carolinian--tour famous American sights, and enjoy the kinds of conversations about spirituality that have engrossed hundreds of thousands of readers from China to Turkey to Croatia, and in every U.S. state. Otto's sister, Cecelia, his daughter Natasha, son Anthony, and niece Shelsa, all have roles in the story, as the famous duo pilots a hybrid pickup along back roads and superhighways, toward the series' climactic finish.

Two lovers separated in war-torn Italy struggle to reunite in a riveting and heartrending historical novel by the bestselling author of Once Night Falls and From These Broken Streets.

It's 1945. The Nazi occupation of Italy is in its closing days. But risk is ever present.

It's been nearly two years since Sarah Zinsi found tenuous sanctuary in Switzerland. Unmoored in a foreign land, she heeds a rumor that her village on the Lake Como shore has been liberated. Clutching her young daughter, Sarah navigates the arduous mountain trek back home to be with Luca Benedetto, the father of her child.

A resister to the end, Luca has one last assignment: assassinate Mussolini, the man who destroyed everything Luca cherished and who forced the love of his life to flee. Sarah's path crosses that of a charismatic and kindly black marketeer turned partisan spy. He vows to keep mother and child safe as Luca's perilous mission escalates and the Nazis' final moves devolve into chaos.

But for Sarah and Luca, the pull of love, the will to survive, and the promise of a new family are greater than any odds against them.

On the surface, LUNCH WITH BUDDHA is a story about family. Otto Ringling and his sister Cecelia could not be more different. He's just turned 50, an editor of food books at a prestigious New York publishing house, a man with a nice home in the suburbs, children he adores, and a sense of himself as being a mainstream, upper-middle-class American. Cecelia is the last thing from mainstream. For two decades she's made a living reading palms and performing past-life regressions. She believes firmly in our ability to communicate with those who have passed on. It will turn out, though, that they have more in common than just their North Dakota roots. In LUNCH WITH BUDDHA, when Otto faces what might be the greatest of life's difficulties, it is Cecelia who knows how to help him. As she did years earlier in this book's predecessor, BREAKFAST WITH BUDDHA, she arranges for her brother to travel with Volya Rinpoche, a famous spiritual teacher - who now also happens to be her husband. After early chapters in which the family gathers for an important event, the novel portrays a road trip made by Otto and Rinpoche, in a rattling pickup, from Seattle to the family farm in North Dakota. Along the way the brothers-in-law have a series of experiences - some hilarious, some poignant - all aimed at bringing Otto a deeper peace of mind. They visit American landmarks; they have a variety of meals, both excellent and awful; they meet a cast of minor characters, each of whom enables Rinpoche to impart some new spiritual lesson. Their conversations range from questions about life and death to talk of history, marijuana, child-rearing, sexuality, Native Americans, and outdoor swimming. In the end, with the help of their miraculous daughter, Shelsa, and the prodding of Otto's own almost-adult children, Rinpoche and Cecelia push this decent, middle-of-the-road American into a more profound understanding of the purpose of his life. His sense of the line between possible and impossible is altered, and the story's ending points him toward a very different way of being in this world.

If life is a journey--with detours, paths from which to choose, and myriad roadblocks to overcome--then Otto Ringling is most certainly on the journey of a lifetime. His first fifty or so years were pretty good. He felt he had it all, until one day he didn't.

Seeking understanding, he calls on Volya Rinpoche, a wise man and spiritual leader. A man who accepts the world as it comes to him, a man without pride or vanity. But Rinpoche, as it turns out, is experiencing his own time of doubt. In hopes of finding answers to life's mysteries, the two embark on a journey through America, an amusing and enlightening road trip that becomes a lesson in love and gratitude.

What happens when the Pope and the Dalai Lama decide they need a secret vacation?

Roland Merullo's playful, eloquent, and life-affirming novel finds the world's two holiest men teaming up for an unsanctioned road trip through the Italian countryside--where they rediscover the everyday joys and challenges of ordinary life.

During the Dalai Lama's highly publicized official visit to the Vatican, the Pope suggests an adventure so unexpected and appealing that neither man can resist: they will shed their robes for several days and live as ordinary men. Before dawn, the two beloved religious leaders make a daring escape from Vatican City, slip into a waiting car, and are soon traveling the Italian roads in disguise. Along for the ride is the Pope's neurotic cousin and personal assistant, Paolo, who--to his terror-- has been put in charge of arranging the details of their disappearance. Rounding out the group is Paolo's estranged wife, Rosa, an eccentric entrepreneur with a lust for life, who orchestrates the sublime disguises of each man. Rosa is a woman who cannot resist the call to adventure--or the fun.

Against a landscape of good humor, intrigue, and spiritual fulfillment, The Delight of Being Ordinary showcases the uniquely charming sensibilities of author Roland Merullo. Part whimsical expedition, part love story, part spiritual search, this uplifting novel brings warmth and laughter to the universal concerns of family life, religious inspiration, and personal identity--all of which combine to transcend cultural and political barriers in the name of a once-in-a-lifetime adventure.

Dessert with Buddha takes the eccentric, sort-of-Buddhist monk, Volya Rinpoche, and his skeptical, middle-of-the-road brother-in-law, Otto Ringling, on another enlightening road trip filled with meals, humor, social commentary, and good times.

On this journey, the couple that traveled from New York to North Dakota in Breakfast with Buddha, Seattle to North Dakota in Lunch with Buddha, and North Dakota to Las Vegas in Dinner with Buddha heads down the Eastern Seaboard from Boston to points south. Along the way, they meet an array of intriguing characters-from a former NBA star to a Holocaust survivor, from an A.M.E. preacher to a hedge fund executive, from a Syrian refugee to a homeless North Carolinian-tour some famous American sights, and enjoy the kinds of conversations about spirituality that have engrossed hundreds of thousands of readers from China to Turkey to Croatia, and in every U.S. state.

Otto's sister, Cecelia, his daughter Natasha, son Anthony, and niece Shelsa, all have small but important roles in the story, as the famous duo pilots a hybrid pickup along back roads and superhighways, toward the series' climactic finish.

I wrote Dessert, Merullo says so that it can be enjoyed as a standalone, or after having read the other three novels. I wanted this one to be a testament to the kind of generosity I grew up with, a full-souled selflessness, an antidote to greed.

Dessert with Buddha enhances the series the way a delicious dish of ice cream or slice of homemade pie enhances a great meal. Enjoy the trip!

Herman Hank Fins-Winston was a pro golfer destined for greatness. Now he lives in a condominium on the thirteenth fairway of one of heaven's glorious courses - a fact he finds surprising and amusing, since for one reason or another, a fair percentage of golfers never make it to paradise. Hank is having the time of his afterlife until he's summoned one idyllic morning to play a round with the Almighty. It seems that God is having some trouble with His game. As they play the heavenly courses, both in paradise and back on earth, Hank comes to realize that what began as a golf lesson has become a spiritual journey.

Leaving Losapas begins on a tiny atoll in the equatorial Pacific. Leo Markin, a young US Marine and Vietnam combat veteran who survived the war, found himself so changed by the experience that he simply could not find a way to return to his home, family, and his fiancée in a working class city of his birth outside of Boston. The islanders in Losapas are kind to him-he had been living there for years-and he had found a woman he came to love. Various events conspire to convince him to return to America, but on his return home he feels lost. He has troubling encounters with his aging father, finds that his fiancée has married another man and appears trapped in an abusive relationship, and his old friends seem like strangers to him. Leo is torn between the peaceful, natural way of life on the island, and the rougher rules of his upbringing. In the end, though he has sworn to turn his back on physical violence, it is an act of physical violence that convinces him the only place he can live is Losapas. When his father suddenly dies, Leo decides to leave the house he inherits to his former fiancée-thus encouraging her to leave her husband-and he returns to the life he left behind and to his island lover. Boston Magazine called Leaving Losapas a great surprising book...the best novel of the year... and The Rocky Mountain News said it's a wondrous, spiritually rich story...Merullo has created something of beauty...Leaving Losapas will linger in your mind long after you close its pages.

Roland Merullo's Driving Jesus to Little Rock, fits neatly on the shelf with his other beloved, quirky-spiritual books: Golfing with God, American Savior, Vatican Waltz, The Delight of Being Ordinary, and the Buddha trilogy (Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner)-a list that has sold over half a million copies and been widely translated. This time, the narrator, Eddie Valpolicella, is on his way from Massachusetts to Arkansas to give a talk on his novel, Breakfast with Buddha, when, not far from home, he picks up a mysterious hitchhiker. Plainly dressed, insisting that he's a fan of the author, the hitchhiker claims to be Jesus, the Jesus, and accompanies Eddie on a five-day road trip that challenges him in an amusing variety of ways.

Every night on the way south, Eddie calls home to speak with his wife, and Anna Maria's fiery insistence on choosing trust over suspicion gradually pushes him out of his original cynicism. Jesus plays tricks appearing and disappearing, changing shape, vacillating from stern teacher to affectionate friend-and Eddie, confused, suspicious, and wrestling with his own preconceived notions of spirituality, only very slowly realizes that he's being given precious guidance in the art of living.

As he did in his other road trip adventures, Merullo manages to walk a tightrope by raising deep philosophical questions without sounding preachy. The author provokes readers to think about life while also making them laugh and providing them with a boots-on-the-ground view of America. This journey includes wealthy Russian businessmen, poor Appalachian deer hunters, South American spirit guides, and tours of places as seemingly disparate as a therapeutic massage studio in Lower Manhattan, the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, and Thomas Merton's Gethsemane monastery in rural Kentucky. Along the way there are meals and drinks, wrong turns and intriguing scenery, all brought into focus beside the book's utterly original yet strangely believable Jesus.

Driving Jesus to Little Rock amuses, illuminates, and entertains, ultimately serving as the perfect comfort-food for battered, post-Covid readers.

Jake Entwhistle is smart and handsome, but living with a shadow over his romantic history. Janet Rossi is a bright, witty aide to the governor of Massachusetts, but Janet suffers from an illness that makes her, as she puts it, not exactly a good long-term investment. After meeting by accident late one night, they begin a love affair filled with humor, startling intimacy, and a deep, abiding connection.

Rinpoche's Remarkable Ten-Week Weight Loss Clinic brings back two main characters from Roland Merullo's beloved Buddha Trilogy (Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner with Buddha). This time, though, instead of cruising the American road together, Otto Ringling and Volya Rinpoche are part of the famous meditation master's offbeat weight loss clinic, held over the course of ten Saturdays in a New York City yoga studio. These characters have been alive in my imagination for a decade now, Merullo says, and I just had the sense that Rinpoche, out of his deep compassion, would try to do something about America's obesity epidemic. I've also been fascinated for a long time by the way addiction works--whether it's addiction to food, drugs, alcohol, sex, work, or anything else--the way it occupies the mind and moves us to do things we know we would be better off not doing. I've always wondered what advice Rinpoche would give on the subject.Known--across twenty books, scores of essays, and twenty-five years of publishing--for being willing to try his hand at an unusually wide variety of themes, subjects, and genres, here Merullo works for the first time in the novella form, putting together a deft, moving, and tightly compressed tale that includes his trademark mix of spiritual inquiry and ordinary human emotions. This story is about the challenge of losing weight, yes, the author says, but there's a twist to it at the end, and that opens into a wider territory. I tried to approach it with a full appreciation for the difficulty of breaking old habits, and I gave up a beloved food myself for ten weeks, just to keep things honest.While it does not promise to help readers with their troublesome eating habits or other addictions, Rinpoche's Remarkable Ten-Week Weight Loss Clinic does look at those painful issues from a fresh angle, one full of sympathy and wisdom. It will certainly please lovers of the Buddha Trilogy, and perhaps bring new fans to the hundreds of thousands who've already enjoyed the travels and conversations of Otto and his enlightened teacher.

The Wall Street Journal called Vatican Waltz a welcoming place for parishioners and interlopers alike, continuing Catholics will identify with its plaintive call for the kind of renewal . . . But others, too, if they have kept their minds open, will be surprised at how uplifted they are by its story of individual courage and conviction.

Merullo's latest is a page-turning novel of religious ideas written with love and imagination, wrote Publishers Weekly in a starred review. PW named the book to their Best of 2013 list and said It also sings with finely observed details of family relationships, ethnic neighborhood life, and the life of prayer.

Cynthia Piantedosi lives a quiet, unassuming life outside of Boston, guided by her Catholic faith. When she loses her beloved grandmother, she begins experiencing spells of such intense spiritual intimacy that she wonders about her sanity. Devoted to her elderly father and not particularly interested in dating and socializing, she develops a deep friendship with her parish priest. His congregation sees him as provocative and radical, but he encourages Cynthia to explore her faith--however it presents itself.

When he is killed in a mysterious accident, a message begins to emerge from Cynthia's prayers: God is calling her to be the first female Catholic priest. Her revelation is met with ridicule by certain of the more reactionary officials she reaches out to within the Church. Unable to tune out the divine messages, she lets the power of unswerving faith drive her all the way to the Vatican in pursuit of a destiny she doesn't fully understand--and a turn of events that will inevitably bring long overdue change to the Catholic Church.

Fans of Alice McDermott and Merullo's earlier work will appreciate the heart, soul, and sheer joy found in Vatican Waltz and one woman's commitment to a life far more miraculous than she ever imagined, said Booklist.

Roland Merullo, bestselling author of Once Night Falls, returns with a galvanizing historical novel of Nazi-occupied Naples and the rage and resistance of a people under siege.

Italy, 1943. The Nazi occupation has cemented its grip on the devastated city of Naples.

Giuseppe DiPietra, a curator in the National Archives, has a subversive plan to aid the Allies. If he's discovered, forced labor or swift execution. Lucia Pastone, secretary for the Italian Fascist government, is risking her own life in secret defiance of orders. And Lucia's father, Aldo, is a black marketeer who draws Giuseppe and Lucia into the underworld--for their protection and to help plant the seeds of resistance. Their fates are soon intertwined with those of Aldo's devoted lover and a boy of the streets who'll do anything to live another day. And all of Naples is about to join forces to overcome impossible odds and repel the Nazi occupiers.

Inspired by a true historic uprising, From These Broken Streets is a richly layered novel of the extraordinary daring of ordinary people whose bonds of love, family, and unfaltering courage could not be broken.

A novel both literary and suspenseful, Revere Beach Boulevard tells the story of a family that rallies around an errant son, even as a long-hidden secret that has touched all their lives comes to the surface. Peter Imbesalacqua has bent the rules and battled a gambling addiction for most of his adult life. Now, his real-estate business in shambles and his life in danger because of an unpaid debt, he spins at the center of a hurricane of love and risk. His parents, sister, and friends, all carrying their own secrets, find themselves drawn into the terrifying storm, each trying to do for Peter what he must ultimately do - or fail to do - for himself. Revere Beach Boulevard is a rich and heartfelt novel that looks deeply into the secret places in men's and women's hearts, places only great fiction can reveal. The Boston Globe selected Revere Beach Boulevard as one of its Top 100 Essential New England Books and author Richard Russo called it ...a great novel - ambitious, heartfelt and oh-so skilled.

By turns darkly menacing and bright with love and resilience, The Talk-Funny Girl is the story of one young woman's remarkable courage, a kind of road map for the healing of early abuse, and a testament to the power of kindness and love.

In one of the poorest parts of rural New Hampshire, teenage girls have been disappearing, snatched from back country roads, never to be seen alive again. For seventeen-year-old Marjorie Richards, the fear raised by these abductions is the backdrop to what she lives with in her own home, every day. Marjorie has been raised by parents so intentionally isolated from normal society that they have developed their own dialect, a kind of mountain hybrid of English that displays both their ignorance of and disdain for the wider world. Marjorie is tormented by her classmates, who call her The Talk-funny girl, but as the nearby factory town sinks deeper into economic ruin and as her parents fall more completely under the influence of a sadistic cult leader, her options for escape dwindle. But then, thanks to a loving aunt, Marjorie is hired by a man, himself a victim of abuse, who is building what he calls a cathedral, right in the center of town.

Day by day, as Marjorie's skills as a stoneworker increase, so too does her intolerance for the bitter rules of her family life. Gradually, through exposure to the world beyond her parents' wood cabin thanks to the kindness of her aunt and her boss, and an almost superhuman determination, she discovers what is loveable within herself. This newfound confidence and self-esteem ultimately allows her to break free from the bleak life she has known, to find love, to start a family, and to try to heal her old, deep wounds without passing that pain on to her husband and children.

In this richly evocative novel--the moving story of one boy's coming of age--acclaimed author Roland Merullo will make you nostalgic for a small Massachusetts city called Revere even if you've never been there. Providing a window into an unspoiled America of forty years ago, In Revere welcomes you to the fiercely loyal and devoted Italian-American family of the Benedettos.

Although he was orphaned as a child, young Anthony Benedetto was always surrounded by family, and the vibrant warmth of the Revere community. His Uncle Peter, a former Golden Gloves boxer whose days of glory were behind him, believed Tonio was bound for great things. So did his daughter Rosie, Tonio's favorite cousin, who would take many wrong turns--away from Tonio--through adolescence. His gentle grandparents, who took him in, encouraged him to claim a future outside of Revere, but the warm, unconditional love of his family, and the smells and sounds of Revere stay with him forever.

Selected as one of the 10 Wonderful Romance Novels by Good Housekeeping magazine, A Little Love Story is a sometimes poignant, sometimes hilarious tale of attraction and loyalty, jealousy and grief. It's a classic love story--with some modern twists. Janet Rossi is a very smart aide to the governor of Massachusetts, but she suffers from an illness that makes her, as she puts it, not exactly a good long-term investment. Jake Entwhistle is a few years older, a carpenter and portrait painter, also smart--but with a shadow over his romantic history. After meeting when Janet accidentally backs into Jake's antique truck, they begin a love affair marked by courage, humor, a deep and erotic intimacy . . . and modern complications. Thoughtful, restrained (yet very sexy). . . . Roland Merullo captures what it feels like when you meet 'the one'-and what you're willing to do to hold onto that person, wrote The New York Times.

Part novel of suspense, part family drama, The Return follows six characters originally introduced in Roland Merullo's bestselling novel Revere Beach Boulevard.Kirkus Magazine praised Boulevard in a starred review saying, although it's about family, gambling, gangsters, sin, and redemption, Merullo's smart book resists all the clichés of ethnic melodrama . . . this study in secrets and lies in no way romanticizes either its working-class Italians or the goodfellas who prey upon their addictions. Merullo, with a tip of his hat to Dostoyevsky, probes the psyche of the gambler but avoids any neat explanations for --the animal of addiction. The conflict of loyalties here (church, blood, class) also accounts for much inner turmoil among the primary characters, each drawn with sensitivity and intelligence. If Coppola or Scorsese ever repent for their glamorization of the underworld, this is the perfect novel to bring to the big screen: the ordinary people of Merullo's realist fiction, no easy saints themselves, testify to the true meaning of familial love.These lives have been sewn together by love, addiction, and deceit.Peter Imbesalacqua is living in Montana in the witness protection program. A former gambling addict, he went deep in debt to a mob figure in his hometown of Revere, Massachusetts, bravely wore a wire at their last meeting, then had to flee. Now he's happily married, with an adopted son, but he longs for his hometown, and especially misses his aging father.Vito Imbesalacqua, Peter's dad, lives alone in the family home, visited occasionally by his daughter and illegitimate son, Alfonse, and tormented by the mistakes he's made and the way they damaged his family.Joanie Imbesalacqua is obsessed with finding the mobster her brother Peter sent into hiding. She believes -- correctly, as it turns out -- that this evil man will one day return to Revere to seek revenge on her family. Locally famous, secretly gay, Joanie is torn between ambition and family, fury and love.Alfonse Romano is a local police captain, son of Vito, engaged to a woman who fled the Cambodian Holocaust and worried about Joanie, Vito, and Peter. Dutiful, kind, the ultimate straight-arrow, he came of age not knowing the identity of his true father and he and Vito are now rebuilding their relationship.Eddie Crevine was once a mafia captain. When Peter tape-recorded his threats he was forced to leave Revere with his wife, Alicia, and -- like Peter -- live in hiding under a false name. Vicious, racist, utterly self-centered, Eddie is haunted by what he sees as Peter's betrayal of the codes of their hometown. Thousands of miles apart, very different men, Peter and Eddie both decide to return to Revere at the same time, drawing all of the characters into a vortex of violence and grace.

From the Author's Preface: During the ten years I taught in college, and the numerous writing conferences and workshops I have been a part of since then, I've heard volumes of advice about the technical aspects of writing. Plot, character, pace, description, dialogue, theme, metaphor, symbolism, and so on. In the conferences especially, there has been a lot of good practical information about finding an agent, attracting a publisher, self-publishing, e-publishing, and marketing a book once it is in print. All this is very good, helpful, and necessary. For high school and college writers, the technical material is useful; for those writing a book or hoping to make a career in the world of words, the practical material can provide a clear understanding of the publishing landscape. But again and again in those classrooms and workshops, I was struck by the fact that very little was being said about what might be called the emotional or psychological aspects of the writing process. Over the course of thirty years in the profession, thirteen book publications, and several hundred articles, reviews, Op-Ed pieces, travel essays, food essays, personal essays, political analysis, profiles, and thanks to countless conversations with writers - some famous, some widely published and admired, some struggling to finish a first book or find an agent, and some simply hoping to earn a good grade on a college assignment - I know how critical that interior dimension of the writing life is. In this book I hope to shed some light on that dimension of the work, not as a psychiatrist or counselor, but as an author, because I am sure that writing success - however that term is defined for the individual writer - always has its roots in the soil of the psychological/emotional world. From chapters entitled Writer's Block to Finding A Mentor to Impatience and Rejection, Merullo covers these topics with the insight, empathy and encouragement of an author who has been there. Demons of the Blank Page is a no-nonsense handbook and guide for aspiring and established writers alike. Merullo's work has been hailed happily inventive, precise and musical by The Boston Globe and emotionally complex, politically intelligent, and] beautifully written by Kirkus Reviews.