Book description
1576. Five years after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire at the
Battle of Lepanto, a ship steals unnoticed into Venice bearing a
deadly cargo. A man more dead than alive, disembarks and staggers into
Piazza San Marco. He brings a gift to Venice from Constantinople.
Within days the city is infected with bubonic plague - and the Turkish
Sultan has his revenge. But the ship also holds a secret stowaway -
Feyra, a young and beautiful harem doctor fleeing a future as the
Sultan's concubine. Only her wits and medical knowledge keep her alive
as the plague ravages Venice. In despair the Doge commissions the
architect Andrea Palladio to build the greatest church of his career -
an offering to God so magnificent that Venice will be saved. But
Palladio's own life is in danger too, and it will require all skills
of medico Annibale Cason, the city's finest plague doctor, to keep him
alive. But what Annibale had not counted on was meeting Feyra, who is
now under Palladio's protection, a woman who can not only match his
medical skills but can also teach him how to care.
'A great read'
Marina Fiorato is half-Venetian. She was born in Manchester and
raised in the Yorkshire Dales. She is a history graduate of Oxford
University and the University of Venice, where she specialized in the
study of Shakespeare's plays as an historical source. After university
she studied art and since worked as an illustrator, actress and film
reviewer. Marina was married on the Grand Canal and lives in north
London with her husband, son and daughter.
