Description
Just as Lucy Stark, employed by a writer named DV, begins to read her employer's latest manuscript, she receives word that he has died under suspicious circumstances and journeys to Italy to search for the rest of DV's manuscript and to uncover the truth about his death.
Read More
"Acutely observed...charmingly old-fashioned."--Los Angeles TimesIn Italian Fever, Valerie Martin redefines the Gothic novel in a compelling tale of one woman's headlong tumble into a mystery, art, and eros.Part romance, part gothic suspense story and wholly entertaining, Italian Fever is the story of the awakening of Lucy Stark, an American pragmatist. Lucy leads a quiet, solitary life working for a best-selling (but remarkably untalented) writer. When he dies at his villa in Tuscany, Lucy flies to Tuscany to settle his affairs. What begins as a grim chore soon threatens Stark's Emersonian self-reliance--and her very sense of what is real. The villa harbors secrets: a missing manuscript, neighbors whose Byzantine arrogance veils their dark past, a phantom whose nocturnal visits tear a gaping hole in Lucy's well-honed skepticism. And to complicate matters: Massimo, a married man whose tender attentions render Lucy breathless. Smart, sophisticated, achingly beautiful, Italian Fever is one of the most original and compelling novels of the year.
Read Less