In 1630 Venice as the Black Death's victims refuse to stay buried, a plague doctor's daughter and procurator's son team up against arranged marriages, religious zealots, and Doge's palace intrigue to save their city.
As a child, Giovanna Rienzo learned the arts of bloodletting and elixir brewing from her father with an intent to support his work, not take it over. But when he falls ill from the pestilence that's been ravaging Venice for months, the eighteen-year-old reluctantly dons the beaked mask of the plague doctor to avert his banishment to quarantine. Because for the sick, going to the island across the lagoon is usually a one-way trip. Or it was until reports started to surface of some people "dying twice," a mystifying phenomenon Giovanna personally witnesses when a young boy whose heart had clearly stopped miraculously awakens.
But Giovanna has no time to ponder or question what might be part of a divine plan. Vowing to protect her father however she can, she hides him away and sees her first patient—the handsome, but alarmingly feverish Matteo Barozzi. Although she successfully treats this son of a high-ranking official, in a careless moment Giovanna fails to properly conceal her identity. The only reason it remains a secret and she isn't tossed into a dank jail cell is thanks to the young man's honor and feelings of indebtedness.
The association between the noble boy and commoner girl should end there, but when Giovanna's dearest friend goes missing right after her betrothal to the Doge's son amid strange reports of nighttime attacks, violent commotions, and inexplicable behaviors in the community, the only person Giovanna can turn to for help is Matteo. Together, they must carefully navigate Venice's increasingly deadly canals to uncover a sect peddling false cures and a smuggling plot involving the highest levels of nobility or risk the entire city falling victim to something even worse than the plague: the risen dead.
Author Bio: R.S. Kovach is slightly obsessed with Pachelbel's Canon, but not so much with splitting infinitives. An art historian by training (19th C. Venetian architectural mosaics are her jam) and a senior financial administrator by trade, she has worked at universities across three continents. Her native language of Hungarian has been only slightly more useful than her other obscure skill of quoting THE PRINCESS BRIDE, but being a Wattpad Star and Featured author with over 5 million combined reads across various genres has given her the opportunity to write commissioned shorts for THE GALLOWS and CRIMSON PEAK movie promotional campaigns, as well as Hulu's THE HANDMAID'S TALE. Her modern retelling of Grimm's Six Swans was featured in Wattpad's ONCE UPON NOW collection (Gallery Books, 2016), while as the winner of the XOXO After Dark flash fiction contest, her debut, full-length contemporary romance THE LAST RESORT was published by Pocket Star Books (2017). Her pirate adventure PLUNDER was released as an audiobook in 2018 (Hachette Audio) and can now be found as part of the Paid Stories program. She lives with her husband and three boys in the greater Washington, D.C. area continuing to write stories about strong yet relatable heroines, flawed but redeemable heroes, and the occasional villain you'll love to hate.
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