Amid the intrigue and danger of 18th-century Italy, a young woman becomes embroiled in romance and treachery with a rider in the Palio, the breathtaking horse race set in Siena.

A search for an elusive customer leads a young bookseller to research the complicated history of her family in Rome and how it was shaped by mental illness, a communist murder trial, and devastating wartime losses.

Matelda, the Cabrelli family's matriarch, has always been brusque and opinionated. Now, as she faces the end of her life, she is determined to share a long-held secret with her family about her own mother's great love story: with her childhood friend, Silvio, and with dashing Scottish sea captain John Lawrie McVicars, the father Matelda never knew. . . . In the halcyon past, Domenica Cabrelli thrives in the coastal town of Viareggio until her beloved...

"Rome, 1943. Lucia Colombo has had her doubts about fascism for years, but as a single mother in an increasingly unstable country, politics are for other people - she needs to focus on keeping herself and her son alive. Then the Italian government falls and the German occupation begins, and suddenly, Lucia finds that complacency is no longer an option. Francesca Gallo has always been aware of injustice and suffering. A polio survivor who lost her...