Michelle Lovric – författare

In this darkly beautiful and hauntingly vivid novel, Michelle Lovric, acclaimed author of The Floating Book, embarks on an unforgettable journey through the winding alleys and shadowy streets of eighteenth-century Venice and London. With vibrant prose, she weaves together the stories of three disparate yet intertwined characters who find themselves embroiled in a world of murder and secrets. There is Mimosina Dolcezza, the Venetian actress employed as an agente provocatrice by surreptitious European power brokers. By fortune and circumstance, she begins an affair with the elusive Valentine Greatrakes, a roguish fixture within London''s medical underworld. Complicating matters for the pair is the presence of the eccentric and strange child-woman Pevenche, a figure whose fate and identity lie at the heart of the book''s mystery.Following this shadowy group from the dark environs of London''s Bankside to the lively streets of Venice, The Remedy guides us through playhouses, brothels, and convents with luscious details that breathe intoxicating life into the era. Long-listed for the prestigious Orange Prize for Fiction, The Remedy is a seductive and suspenseful tale that stays with you long after you''ve turned the final page.

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...

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...

It is the age of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, when Europe burns with a passion for long, flowing locks. And when seven Irish sisters, penniless and fatherless, grow up with hair cascading down their backs, to their ankles, and beyond, men are not slow to recognise their potential. It begins with a singing and dancing septet, but this is not what fills the seats: it is the torrents of hair they let loose at the end of each show. Their hair is a rich offering and will take the sisters out of poverty, through the dance halls of Ireland, to the salons of Dublin and the palazzi of Venice. It will bring them suitors and obsessive admirers, it will bring some of them love, and each of them loss. For their past trails behind the sisters like the tresses on their heads and their fame and fortune will come at a terrible price...

It is the age of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, when Europe burns with a passion for long, flowing locks. And when seven Irish sisters, penniless and fatherless, grow up with hair cascading down their backs, to their ankles, and beyond, men are not slow to recognise their potential. It begins with a singing and dancing septet, but this is not what fills the seats: it is the torrents of hair they let loose at the end of each show. Their hair is a rich offering and will take the sisters out of poverty, through the dance halls of Ireland, to the salons of Dublin and the palazzi of Venice. It will bring them suitors and obsessive admirers, it will bring some of them love, and each of them loss. For their past trails behind the sisters like the tresses on their heads and their fame and fortune will come at a terrible price...

''So at fifteen, spread belly-down upon the floor, a black sheet hunched over me and a candle at my foot and head, my lips pressed on stone, litanies in my ears as the priest broke and entered my shocked fist to slide the ring on my finger, I promised to take no other husband than Christ. I almost meant it. In that heady moment the vow seemed no great sacrifice: I''d never known a man, but I had tasted chocolate.''One unforgettable night in 1785, in a theatre in Drury Lane, the heady alchemy of love and murder suddenly fuses the lives of Mimosina Dolcezza, a Venetian actress, and Valentine Greatrakes, prince of London''s medical underworld.The Remedy is a ravishing love story that seamlessly weaves fiction with historical fact in rich and details prose.

When I think of Venice as she was in 1782, I think of a hundred thousand souls all devoted to pleasure. Souls like that become insubstantial and faintly luminous. You see, we were in the phosphorescent stage of decay...Richly imagined and as irresistible as its magical setting, Carnevale evokes the three great loves of the painter Cecilia Cornaro: Casanova, Byron and La Serenissima herself.

Venice, 1468. Sosia Simeon, a free-spirited sensualist, is the lover of many men in the fabled city, though married to one she despises. On the edge of the Grand Canal, Wendelin von Speyer sets up the first printing press in Venice and looks for the book that will make his fortune. When he tempts fate by publishing Catullus, the poet whose desperate and unrequited love inspired the most tender and erotic poems of antiquity, a scandal is set in motion that will change all their lives forever.

It's the beginning of the 20th century; the age of scientific progress. But for Venice the future looks bleak. A conference of scientists assembles to address the problems, among whose delegates are the parents of twelve-year-old Teodora. Within days of her arrival, she is subsumed into the secret life of Venice: a world in which salty-tongued mermaids run subversive printing presses, ghosts good and bad patrol the streets and librarians turn fluidly into cats. A battle against forces determined to destroy the city once and for all quickly ensues. Only Teo, the undrowned child who survived a tragic accident as a baby, can go 'between the linings' to subvert evil and restore order.

It''s the beginning of the 20th century; the age of scientific progress. But for Venice the future looks bleak. A conference of scientists assembles to address the problems, among whose delegates are the parents of twelve-year-old Teodora. Within days of her arrival, she is subsumed into the secret life of Venice: a world in which salty-tongued mermaids run subversive printing presses, ghosts good and bad patrol the streets and librarians turn fluidly into cats. A battle against forces determined to destroy the city once and for all quickly ensues. Only Teo, the undrowned child who survived a tragic accident as a baby, can go ''between the linings'' to subvert evil and restore order.

A brand new exquisitely imagined historical fantasy novel set on the canals of Venice from award-winning author, Michelle Lovric for ages 9+Venice in 1740, a serene and lovely city.But look beneath the surface . . . step off the edge of what you think you know . . .Young orphan Lily has grown up in a glum, prison-like convent. Her only freedom is walking the beautiful streets of Venice, dreaming of escape...of a family...of being loved.Then someone tries to steal the bones of Venice's beloved Saint Lucy. Without her protection, the city's vibrant colours fade to grey. And soon, the Venetians start to turn on one another.If Lily can't find a way to save Saint Lucy, Venice - the only home she's ever known - will descend into darkness...forever.A magical adventure set amongst mysterious canals and filled with monstrous eels, moody mermaids and menacing curses.

A dazzling tale of passion and resistance – told with heart, wit and feathers.Venice, 1817. A disfigured traitor. A revolutionary milliner. A sadistic assassin. A poet. And a puffin. When a fingerless nobleman seizes a puffin that arrives mysteriously at the Rialto Market, he triggers a cascade of events that will embroil all the central characters.The puffin’s fervid character and his matrimonial tragedies put the bird on a collision course with the worst and best of humanity. Alva the milliner fights for freedom from Venice’s Habsburg occupiers. Her brother Favaloro smuggles cod and sedition from the Lofoten Islands. Brother and sister join the revolutionary sect of the Carbonari, plotting to ransom a Habsburg princess. And both fall in love with Tommaso, who walks with a crutch but whose poetry overthrows hearts.Betrayals shatter all their plans and desires. Tommaso falls prey to a ruthless seducer. Alva must sacrifice herself to save Favaloro. As the Habsburgs send the poet to the scaffold, the puffin’s fate hangs in the balance and the assassin’s identity is shockingly revealed.Michelle Lovric is a novelist, poet and environmentalist who lives in London and Venice. Her work explores the history of medicine, trauma and art, with Venice as both protagonist and setting. Her adult fiction includes The Remedy, longlisted for the Women’s Prize. Although it stands completely alone, The Puffin takes off where the author’s acclaimed novel The Book of Human Skin ends and welcomes back its most memorable character.A genre-defying literary epic fusing the politics of coercion and surrender with the fire of resistance – set in a vividly imagined 19th-century Venice. Featuring a cast of unforgettable characters – not all of them human – this novel explores love, faith, language and consciousness with lyricism and midnight-black humour.

Christmas began with a good but harassed woman giving birth in difficult domestic circumstances. Somewhere between then and now the circumstances have changed, but for women today Christmas is still a time of joys garnered against the odds. We have moved on from stables and mangers to supermarkets and microwaves, and palm fronds, shepherds and lambs have given way to a fat red-suited man, a spangled conifer and well-stuffed stockings. In this anthology reflecting the experiences of more than fifty women at Christmas, Jenny Eclair rubs shoulders with Agatha Christie, Laurie Graham, Nancy Mitford, Sue Townsend, Stella Gibbons, Mrs Beeton, Clare Boylan and many others. Curl up with a tantalizing volume that gives full reign to the seditious humour, peculiar discomforts and exquisite social tortures of the season.

'So at fifteen, spread belly-down upon the floor, a black sheet hunched over me and a candle at my foot and head, my lips pressed on stone, litanies in my ears as the priest broke and entered my shocked fist to slide the ring on my finger, I promised to take no other husband than Christ. I almost meant it. In that heady moment the vow seemed no great sacrifice: I'd never known a man, but I had tasted chocolate.'One unforgettable night in 1785, in a theatre in Drury Lane, the heady alchemy of love and murder suddenly fuses the lives of Mimosina Dolcezza, a Venetian actress, and Valentine Greatrakes, prince of London's medical underworld.The Remedy is a ravishing love story that seamlessly weaves fiction with historical fact in rich and details prose.

When I think of Venice as she was in 1782, I think of a hundred thousand souls all devoted to pleasure. Souls like that become insubstantial and faintly luminous. You see, we were in the phosphorescent stage of decay...Richly imagined and as irresistible as its magical setting, Carnevale evokes the three great loves of the painter Cecilia Cornaro: Casanova, Byron and La Serenissima herself.