The book of human skin is a large volume with many pages of villainy writ upon it.
There are people who are a disease, you know.

13
May, 1784, Venice: Minguillo Fasan, heir to the decaying, gothic
Palazzo Espagnol, is born. Yet Minguillo is no ordinary child: he is
strange, devious and all those who come near him are fearful. Twelve
years later Minguillo is faced with an unexpected threat to his
inheritance: a newborn sister, Marcella. His untempered jealousy will
condemn his sister to a series of fates as a cripple, a madwoman and a
nun. But in his insatiable quest to destroy her, he may have
underestimated his sister''s ferocious determination, and her unlikely
allies who will go to extraordinary lengths to save her...