I've just picked up this first book from Canadian born / Australian residing first-time author - Susan Parisi. The first paragraph:
"I follow her as she moves along the Fondamente delle Tette. A young woman dressed as a man. Anxiously, she glances over her shoulder, not for fear of discovery but because she is lost. I see, as she turns, a profusion of frills cascading down the front of her waistcoat and her face is thick with powder. I also see that, unaccustomed to a life lived among the waters of the lagoon, she has failed to notice the gondola gliding silently behind her."
Venice, 1762. As Carnevale bursts across the city revellers take to the streets in masks and lavish costumes to lose themselves in pleasure. Yet while Venetians celebrate, a nightmare is about to unfold . . .
Laudomia Codussi, a beautiful young woman tormented by terrifying visions, takes a lover and is drawn into his dangerous obsession with opium. When a series of gruesome murders is revealed, Laudomia embarks on an urgent quest to unmask the killer. Until she can separate reality from fantasy, no one is safe – least of all herself. But in a city transformed by illusion, who can say what is real and what is not?
in the tradition of Anne Rice and Patrick Suskind, Blood of Dreams is a lush and intoxicating odyssey through the grand palaces, decadent salons and sinister alleyways of eighteenth-century Venice – a journey from which no one will emerge unscathed.