The Forger of Florence

In the spring of 1498, as Savonarola's Bonfire of the Vanities still smolders, the corpse of Lorenzo Varese—wealthy patron of the arts and secret collector of forbidden pagan texts—is found strangled in his palazzo overlooking the Arno. Master illuminator Sister Chiara, who paints delicate heretical margins in the scriptorium of San Marco, is summoned by Lorenzo's widow Contessa Isabetta to examine a flawless counterfeit of Michelangelo's Pietà that arrived the morning of his death. When Chiara recognizes the forgery's brushwork as her own from a burned sketchbook, she must navigate the treacherous alleys between Dominican fanaticism, Medici loyalists, and a killer who forges not only art but alibis—before the next victim bears her signature too.

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