The Botticelli Secret

In the gorgeous, brutal world of fifteenth-century Italy, Luciana Vetra is young and beautiful, with waist-length ringlets of golden hair. She is also a part-time model and a full-time whore. When her best client asks her to pose as the goddess Flora for Sandro Botticelli's painting La Primavera, Luciana is willing to oblige--until the artist abruptly sends her away without payment. Luciana is not usually a thief, but this time she is angry, and cannot resist taking an unfinished version of the painting, if only to look at it some more. But Luciana soon learns that someone is ready to kill her--and nearly everyone she knows--to get the painting back. As friends and clients are murdered around her, Luciana turns to the one man who has never tried to exploit her beauty, Guido della Torre, a novice at the monastery of Santa Croce. Fleeing Florence together, Luciana and Guido race through the nine great cities of Renaissance Italy, desperately trying to decode the painting's secrets before their enemies stop them. Gloriously fresh and vivid, with a deliciously irreverent heroine, The Botticelli Secret is a masterful blend of historical intrigue and romantic adventure.