Ardythe Ashley – författare

Two interconnected tales of a love affair that began amid the timeless beauty of Venice from the author of In the Country of the Great King. Romance naturally emanates from Venice, a city of passion and eroticism. This was the case for Mara, a Nebraskan writer who had emigrated from the United States fourteen years previously. One of her newly-published novels brings passion to her, when the son of an ex-lover comes looking for resolution. Having read the book, which Mara based on her and her lover’s real-life interlude, James finds Mara and they are instantly enamored with each other. As the story unfolds, they encounter sensuality, love, and danger.

To Murder and Create is an extraordinarily creative and engaging historical novel loosely structured around T. S. Eliot''s paradigm-bending modernist poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Set in Boston of 1915, an array of eccentric and eminently charming tenants inhabit a boardinghouse sternly governed by a rule-bound yet likable landlady. They include the retired captain with a secret, the literary-minded cook, the spinster who has all but given up on love, two carpetbaggers who could have sprung from the pages of Mark Twain, the "confirmed bachelor" who stumbles into happiness, and the retired professor who is obsessed with his former student, T. S. Eliot. Star-crossed love, passion, jealousy, and courage take center stage in this captivating glimpse of an authentically rendered bygone world brimming with timeless questions of the heart and mind.