And so with happiness, I give you the following synopsis and excerpt from the new novel, which you will have a chance to win your own advance readers' copy at the end of the blog post.
Enjoy!
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| Available from Sourcebooks Landmark, September 2 2014 |
A mystery trapped in time..In 1921, infamous Italian poet Galeazzo D’Ascanio wrote his last and greatest play, inspired by his muse and mistress, actress Celia Sands. On the eve of opening night, Celia vanished, and the play was never performed.
Now, two generations later, Alessandro D’Ascanio plans to stage his grandfather’s masterpiece and has offered the lead to a promising young English actress, also named Celia Sands—at the whim of her actress mother, or so she has always thought. When Celia arrives at D’Ascanio’s magnificent, isolated Italian villa, she is drawn to the mystery of her namesake’s disappearance—and to the compelling, enigmatic Alessandro. But the closer Celia gets to learning the first Celia’s fate, the more she is drawn into a web of murder, passion, and the obsession of genius. Though she knows she should let go of the past, in the dark, in her dreams, it comes back…
Excerpt:
It
was noon when he reached the Piazza San Marco.
The
midday sun had bleached the square and cast a haze across the
piazzetta, so that even the statues of San Teodoro and San Marco’s
winged lion, they who had for these eight centuries stood vigi lant,
their eyes fixed ever eastward over the serene lagoon, appeared today
to slumber on their columns while below them at the edge of the canal
the water barely swelled beneath the waiting row of gondolas.
He
turned his back upon the gleaming pinnacles and domes of the basilica
and searched among the faces in the strolling crowd for hers. No easy
task, that. All of Venice seemed to be here, standing idly sharing
gossip in the shadow of the bell-tower, or lunching at café tables
by the Moorish colonnades. Music rose and met from either side of the
piazza where the orchestras competed for attention from beneath their
café awnings, a cultivated duel of rival melodies and rhythm that
yet managed to produce a pleasing harmony.
“Maître!”
a delighted voice behind him cried and, turning, he recognized the
oldest of the waiters from the café on his right, a sun-creased man
from Corsica whose thick French accent clung to every word. “Maître,
what a joy to see you here again. You must sit here, where all who
pass can see you and pay tribute to your talent.”
He
hesitated…he had not meant to stop here, but rather, like one of
his own hounds, to keep to the chase, to find the scent and pursue
it, relentless…but the waiter’s words, the blatant adoration,
moved him suddenly. He sat. What did it matter, he thought, if he
paused for a meal? Did not his own hounds hunt the better when they
were refreshed?
He
ate and drank deliberately, in honor of the watching eyes. A scraping
of chairs at the table behind him announced the arrival of a new
party, young, gay with laughter. A man in English said: “Oh no, but
it really was too bad of you, John, not to stop the boat and let her
have a go. She might have done it.”
“Nonsense.
From what I’ve heard, nobody gets in to see him. That man of his
guards him like a Gurkha.”
And
then a woman, in amusement, said: “I fancy Celia’s a match for
any man’s man. Aren’t you, darling?”
Still
with his back to their table he froze, his glass half-lifted to his
lips, as something wonderful and warm began to tingle all along his
spine. Fighting the impulse to leap to his feet at that moment and
face her, he felt in his pockets for pencil and paper. Their meeting,
this first meeting, mustn’t be ordinary. It must be creative, it
must have appropriate drama. He wrote quickly, and signaled the
waiter.
“Yes,
maître?”
Keeping
his voice hushed he urged the man closer, conspiring.
“Behind
me—the blonde at the table behind me…”
A
glance flickered over his head and then back again. “Yes, maître?”
“There
is only one blonde?”
“There
is, maître.”
“Excellent.
When I am gone, you will give her this note,” he said, folding the
paper and pressing it into the waiter’s hand.
“You
will give it to her privately, pretending it is something she has
dropped, perhaps. Do this for me, and I will be forever in your
debt.”
The
waiter bowed his head and left.
Once
more the laughter of the English party rang out close behind him, and
he raised his glass and drank the sweetness of the wine and smiled.
Links to my reviews of a few of Susanna Kearsley's recent novels:
The Splendour Falls
The Firebird
The Shadowy Horses
GIVEAWAY of one ARC copy of Season of Storms!
(Open to USA only)
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