?A devastating account of the sexual awakening of an English lady,? (Publishers Weekly) played out amongst the stagnant lagoons of the Adriatic, underneath an unforgiving Tuscan sun.

Miranda, her husband Louis, and their baby daughter are supposed to be spending the summer in a rented villa in Tuscany. He's a self-assured young American actor. She's a well-educated and well-bred English ingénue. Shortly after they arrive, however, Louis is unexpectedly called back to London. Abandoned in the middle of the Italian countryside with her baby, Miranda's increasingly fraught solitude is disturbed by the arrival of a handsome young Italian. His name is Oreste?an actor from Rome, invited by her husband.

Miranda immediately falls under his spell and into his arms. Their tempestuous, frenzied affair awakens within her a sexuality of which she was previously unaware. But it also unleashes something fateful and violent too, setting events in motion that send the novel hurtling?"close, charged, brittle, heedless and headlong" (Kirkus)?toward its horrifying conclusion.

Written in the same "limpid, assured style: cruel, yes, but not detached or apathetic" (Harper's Magazine) as Lord Jim at Home?which was hailed ?a masterpiece? (The Telegraph) when it was recently republished?Dinah Brooke's transgressive debut remains every bit as shocking as when it was first published in 1971.