"An accomplished and compulsively readable comedy of manners," Kate Saunders, Cosmopolitan.
"This elegant and witty novel is distinguished by foreceful and angry writing," Pam Barrett, Sunday Times.
"A wonderfully snotty heroine…told with vim and vitriol,"
Zoe Heller, Independent on Sunday.

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At eighteen, Emma Kenward runs away from her dull upper-class home to try her luck as a painter in Tuscany. Waspish, idealistic and far too clever for her own good, she is at the awkward age when women choose their futures - and their identities.

Once in Italy, Emma blossoms and is taken up by a mixture of characters, including Sylvia, her volatile American mentor, Dr. Evenlode, an Oxford don she had hoped never to see again; and Lucio, a seductive and anarchic young Italian as interested in Emma's body as in her mind. Santorno, however, is not merely a picturesque town set in the golden landscape of the Tuscan countryside. Hidden among the malicious stories told by provincial gossips and in the walls of the mysterious Palazzo Felici lie secrets, long buried but not forgotten. Emma, ever curious, delves deep and discovers the truth about her new world, her old self - and a gruesome murder.