Italian Fever Av Valerie Martin

"Acutely observed...charmingly old-fashioned."--<i>Los Angeles Times</i><br><br>In <b>Italian Fever</b>, Valerie Martin redefines the Gothic novel in a compelling tale of one woman''s headlong tumble into a mystery, art, and eros.<br><br>Part romance, part gothic suspense story and wholly entertaining, <b>Italian Fever</b> 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. <br><br>Sm