Laurel Corona – författare

Chiaretta and Maddalena are as different as night and day. They were abandoned at birth outside the steps of the Ospedale della Pieta, Venice's world-famous foundling hospital and musical academy. Rebellious Chiaretta develops into a dazzling singer, soon becoming a celebrated soloist. Her more reserved sister takes up the violin and forms a dangerous bond with her instructor, the controversial red-haired priest - and suspected womaniser - Antonio Vivaldi. Based on rich historical research this is a fictionalised account of the lives of two sisters.

Woman is born free, and everywhere she is in corsets. . . . Lili du Châtelet yearns to know more about her mother, the brilliant French mathematician Emilie. But the shrouded details of Emilie’s unconventional life—and her sudden death—are elusive. Caught between the confines of a convent upbringing and the intrigues of the Versailles court, Lili blossoms under the care of a Parisian salonnière as she absorbs the excitement of the Enlightenment, even as the scandalous shadow of her mother’s past haunts her and puts her on her own path of self-discovery. Laurel Corona’s breathtaking new novel, set on the eve of the French Revolution, vividly illuminates the tensions of the times, and the dangerous dance between the need to conform and the desire to chart one’s own destiny and journey of the heart.