Roland Merullo Books in Order

Vietnam veteran Leo Markin has built a fragile new life on a Pacific island and does not want to go home. But a return to Massachusetts forces him to choose between the rough world he left and the quieter one he found.

Two weeks before the failed 1991 coup, American official Anton Czesich arrives in Moscow to run a risky food program and confront the woman he once loved. Around him, private regrets and political upheaval begin to merge.

Peter Imbesalacqua's gambling debts and a long-buried family secret pull his Revere relatives into danger. It is part suspense novel, part family drama, set in a neighborhood where love and trouble travel close together.

Merullo uses golf to think about patience, ego, frustration, pleasure, and the deeper reasons people keep coming back to the game. It is part sports writing, part memoir, part meditation.

Tonio grows up in 1950s Revere inside a large Italian American family trying to get by and get ahead. After losing his parents young, he must find a way through grief, loyalty, and the hard pull of home.

In this memoir, Merullo returns to Revere, Massachusetts, to write about family, class, neighborhood life, and the long reach of childhood. It is affectionate, clear-eyed, and deeply rooted in place.

Janet Rossi, a smart political aide living with serious illness, falls for Jake Entwhistle, a carpenter and portrait painter with his own emotional scars. Their love story is intimate, funny, and shadowed by real complications.

Dead golfer Hank Fins-Winston is surprised to find himself in heaven, and even more surprised when God asks for help with His game. The result is a comic afterlife novel about regret, grace, and second chances.

Otto Ringling, a skeptical editor from New York, gets stuck driving his sister's guru to North Dakota. The trip turns funny, awkward, and unexpectedly searching as meals, detours, and long talks force Otto to look at his life differently.

Jesus reappears and announces that he is running for president, setting off a media storm and a national panic. Through the eyes of journalist Russ Thomas, Merullo turns a wild premise into a sharp satire about religion and politics.

Former CIA agent Carolina Perez is deep inside a plot to topple Castro, but the mission is far more tangled than she knows. Moving between Miami and Havana, this thriller mixes espionage, betrayal, and Cuba's hunger for change.

A summer near Lake Como gives Merullo a chance to write about golf, food, family travel, and the Italian art of slowing down. This is a warm, funny travel memoir with plenty of appetite.

Rather than offering a mechanical how-to, Merullo looks at the inner life of writers, block, rejection, mentors, patience, and staying sane. It is practical, candid, and especially useful for people trying to keep going.

While her father lies dying in a hospital, Sylvie plays a round of golf with him on the phone. Shot by shot, the game becomes a tender conversation about memory, love, and the language they have always shared.

Seventeen-year-old Marjorie Richards has been raised in isolation by parents who speak their own strange dialect and keep the world out. As fear closes in around her, she begins a painful, brave search for freedom.

After a shattering loss, Otto Ringling turns again to Volya Rinpoche and the open road. Their drive from Seattle to North Dakota mixes grief, humor, family tension, and the slow search for peace.

In this memoir piece, Merullo looks back at his father, a stubborn, ambitious man marked by setbacks, faith, and discipline. It is a compact, moving meditation on what a son understands only later.

A family trip to Italy goes memorably wrong, with illness, cold houses, bad decisions, and one mishap after another. Merullo turns the chaos into a funny, affectionate travel story about family under pressure.

Years after fleeing Revere, Peter Imbesalacqua is living in witness protection and aching for home. When old enemies and old loyalties pull him back, family drama and street-level danger collide.

After her grandmother's death and a priest's murder, devout Cynthia Piantedosi starts receiving powerful spiritual impressions that change her life. Her search for answers takes her from Boston-area parish life to the Vatican itself.

Otto and Rinpoche head across the American heartland toward Las Vegas, each carrying private trouble. What follows is another talk-filled road trip about love, purpose, loss, and whatever might be waiting around the next bend.

This short guide is less about swing tips than about how to behave on a course. Merullo covers pace, safety, courtesy, and the unwritten rules that make golf more enjoyable for everyone.

Otto Ringling and Volya Rinpoche reunite in a quirky New York weight-loss clinic that quickly becomes about far more than food. In novella form, Merullo explores appetite, addiction, and self-worth with humor and sympathy.

When the Pope and the Dalai Lama slip away for a secret road trip through the Italian countryside, the result is funny, restless, and surprisingly tender. Their stolen holiday becomes a fresh look at joy, faith, and ordinary life.

This collection gathers true stories of kindness, courage, and generosity as a counterweight to the daily flood of bad news. Merullo pays attention to small acts that make the world feel more livable.

In Nazi-occupied Italy, Luca Benedetto joins the resistance while trying to protect Sarah, the Jewish woman he loves. As war closes in on Lake Como, ordinary people are pushed toward extraordinary acts of courage.

Set in Naples in 1943, this novel follows ordinary Italians, from archivists to street kids, as they resist brutal Nazi occupation. It is a tense, human story about survival, defiance, and a city that refuses to submit.

On his way to a book talk in Arkansas, writer Eddie Valpolicella picks up a hitchhiker who claims to be Jesus. Their five-day drive becomes funny, prickly, and unexpectedly serious about what faith means now.

War separates vineyard owner's daughter Vittoria from Carlo, the humble young man she loves, and both are forced into danger. Set in Italy in 1943, the novel blends romance, resistance, and family secrets.

Retired Otto Ringling sets out with Rinpoche on one last road trip, this time along the East Coast and with a plan to give money away. The journey turns into a generous, questioning look at privilege, purpose, and late-life change.

In 1945, Sarah crosses back into Italy from Switzerland with her young daughter, hoping to find Luca and rebuild their life. At the same time, Luca is drawn into one last dangerous mission as Mussolini's rule collapses.

Part memoir and part spiritual reflection, this book traces eight moments from Merullo's life, from grief and first love to marriage, work, and children. A mysterious visiting figure ties the episodes into a meditation on how people learn.