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Caroline Grant is struggling to accept the end of her marriage when she receives an unexpected bequest. Her beloved great-aunt Lettie leaves her a sketchbook, three keys, and a final whisper… Venice. Caroline’s quest: to scatter Juliet “Lettie” Browning’s ashes in the city she loved and to unlock the mysteries stored away for more than sixty years.
It’s 1938 when art teacher Juliet Browning arrives in romantic Venice. For her students, it’s a wealth of history, art, and beauty. For Juliet, it’s poignant memories and a chance to reconnect with Leonardo Da Rossi, the man she loves whose future is already determined by his noble family. However star-crossed, nothing can come between them. Until the threat of war closes in on Venice and they’re forced to fight, survive, and protect a secret that will bind them forever.
Key by key, Lettie’s life of impossible love, loss, and courage unfolds. It’s one that Caroline can now make right again as her own journey of self-discovery begins.
(Summary provided by the author)
Rhys Bowen is the New York Times bestselling author of two historical mystery series as well as the #1 Kindle bestseller In Farleigh Field and numerous other international bestsellers.
In Farleigh Field was nominated for the Edgar Award, and won the Agatha Award for best historical mystery as well as the Macavity and Bruce Alexander Memorial Awards. 2021’s The Venice Sketchbook was nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Novel of the Year. The Tuscan Child has sold over half a million copies to date.
Rhys was born in Bath, England, and educated at London University, but now divides her time between California and Arizona. Her books have been nominated for every major mystery award and she has won twenty of them to date. They have been translated into twenty-two languages, including Chinese and Arabic.
She currently writes two historical mystery series, each very different in tone. The Molly Murphy mysteries, now being co-written with her daughter Clare Broyles, feature an Irish immigrant woman in turn-of-the-century New York City. These books are multi-layered, complex stories with a strong sense of time and place and have won many awards including Agatha and Anthony. There are 20 books so far in this series, plus three Kindle stories, The Amersham Rubies, Through the Window and The Face in the Mirror—a great way to introduce new readers to Molly’s spunky personality.
Then there is Lady Georgie, Rhys’s latest, and very popular, heroine. She’s 35th in line to the throne of England, but she’s flat broke and struggling to survive in the Great Depression. These books are lighter and funnier than Molly’s adventures. They poke gentle fun at the British class system—about which Rhys knows a lot, having married into an upper-class family rather like Georgie’s, with cousins with silly nicknames, family ghosts and stately homes. The eighteenth book in the series, We Three Queens, will be published in November 2024. Three books in the series have won the Agatha Award for best historical mystery. The series received the Readers’ Choice Award for favorite mystery series and Rhys was nominated for career achievement. It was also voted one of Goodreads’ top-10 cozy mysteries.
Her most recent achievement has been the big historical stand-alone novels, Above the Bay of Angels, In Farleigh Field, The Victory Garden, The Tuscan Child, Where The Sky Begins and The Paris Assignment. They have enjoyed impressive sales world-wide and brought Rhys many new readers. Her next stand-alone, The Rose Arbor, will be published in August 2024.
As a child, Rhys spent time with relatives in Wales. Those childhood experiences colored her first mystery series, about Constable Evans in the mountains of Snowdonia. She wrote ten books in the series, including the Edgar nominee Evan’s Gate. The Evan Evans series is currently being reissued in the U.K. by Joffe Books.
She has lived in England, Germany and Australia, but has called California her home for many years. She now escapes to a condo in Arizona during those cold California winters. When she’s not writing, she loves to travel, sing, hike, paint, play the Celtic harp and spoil her grandchildren.
(Biography provided by the author)
