Linda Lappin

In this award-winning literary gothic novel, American photographer, Harriet Sackett, travels to Italy in 1922 to capture images of ancient Etruscan tombs. There, she falls for Count Federigo, a mysterious and charismatic figure who—perhaps in jest—claims to be an Etruscan spirit. As her obsession with him grows, Harriet's mental state unravels, leading to a series of dark discoveries. The story is told through the perspective of her English cousins, who read Harriet's diary to uncover the truth about Federigo. Is Harriet's lover a conman, a ghost, or a figment of Harriet's imagination?  Romance and intrigue unfold amid Tuscan villas and eerie Etruscan landscapes. "Gothic in the grand style-darkly mysterious, psychologically acute, emotionally subtle." -Tom Wilhelmus, longtime fiction critic for the Hudson Review. Pleasure Boat Studio is proud to announce the first US print & paperback edition of Linda Lappin's tantalizing debut novel, reminiscent of John Fowles' The Magus.

 

genre: Mystery, Suspense, Romance, Historical, Gothic

keywords:  Dark, Occult, Romantic, Eerie, Etruscan

Setting:  1920s, Italy, Tuscany, Tuscia

 

Available from INGRAM  AMAZON BN BOOKSHOP ORG IBOOKS LIBBY OVERDRIVE HOOPLA

 

 

An old villa, a garden of monstrous statues,  6 people victims of themselves and a sassy white cat -- these are the characters in Signatures in Stone.  

In Fascist-era Italy, four travelers explore the eerie Monster Park. When a murder occurs, mystery writer Daphne must solve it by cracking the park's dark secret.

An art critic, an aspiring painter, an aristocrat, and a mystery writer—meet in Italy's eerie Monster Park of Bomarzo during the Fascist era. The park's grotesque statues hide an alchemical secret. They point out a pathway to self-knowledge that leads through hell before ascending to the light. Finestone, the art critic, sees the park as a cosmic tool to alter fate, while Daphne, the mystery writer, believes hidden signs and signatures can reveal the future and uncover the truth of past events. When a murder in the park shocks the group, Daphne becomes the prime suspect. To solve the murder and clear her name, she must confront her own demons and read the signs scattered all around her. In solving the murder she'll also crack the code of the Monster Park, and discover the source of its life-transforming power.

 WINNER: Daphne DuMaurier Award for Best Mystery & Suspense Writing

 

The 2023 edition celebrates the 500th anniversary of the birth of Duke Pierfrancesco (Vicino) Orsini -- founder of the Bomarzo garden.

Click on the image for universal purchase link. Available also at Walmart at a discount! Find your favorite bookseller for ebooks or print by clicking here on this universal purchase link.

 

"Scary & satisfying. Lappin's people are as dangerous and compelling as her Italy." Nina Auerbach, Our Vampires, Ourselves.

"An intelligent summer mystery. Much to savor here. " Library Journal

"The book bewitches." Mystery Scene Magazine

 

genre: Historical Mystery. Art History Mystery. Occult Mystery

Keywords:  Bomarzo.  Myth.  Dark.  Tarot.

Settings:  1920, Italy, Bomarzo, Tuscia

 

 

Available from: INGRAM.   AMAZON.  BN. BOOKSHOP. ORG. HOOPLA  OVERDRIVE LIBBY

 

"This is such a pleasure to read. Unlike most books with writing prompts, this one goes in depth with sensitizing you to ground yourself in awareness of where you are and why. Grazie, Linda, for this marvelous work." --Frances Mayes, author Under the Tuscan Sun

I write literary fiction with a strong sense of place, influenced by the areas where I have lived and traveled extensively: Italy, France, and Greece. My novels also have a marked historical focus—and are mainly set in the early twentieth century, with women artists and writers as the narrators and/or main characters. Sometimes my narrators are well-known historical figures, like Katherine Mansfield or Jeanne Hébuterne; while others are fictional composites. I try to recreate accurate historical settings and stick to known biographical details based on thorough research as in my novel Katherine's Wish, praised as "creative scholarship." But sometimes my work is "genre-bending," mixing at times elements of gothic, fantasy, myth, suspense, mystery and magical realism into the sturdy pot of historical fiction and fictional biography. My books have won prizes and honorable mentions in the small press circuit: Ippy, Nautilus, New York Book Festival, Paris Book Festival, Foreword,  Eric Hoffer. My mystery tale, SIGNATURES IN STONE  won the overall prize for Best Mystery in the Daphne DuMaurier award in 2014.  My newest novel is LOVING MODIGLIANI: The Afterlife of Jeanne Hébuterne.  I have also taught creative writing and travel writing for many years, and my creative writing book, THE SOUL OF PLACE: Ideas and Exercises for Conjuring the Genius Loci, deals with the ways place may be a source of inspiration for writing and artistic endeavors.

 

In 2023, Pleasure Boat Studio issued a second edition of Signatures in Stone A Bomarzo Mystery, commemorating the 500th anniversary of this unique Italian sculpture garden.

In 2024, 20 years after its first pubilication, Pleasure Boat Studio will release The Etruscan --second edition, and first US print & paperback edition!

 

My favorite themes include travel and displacement, quests and loss, the search for self and the search for home. The essence of my reading, writing, traveling, and research has led me to realize that places inhabit us just as we inhabit them. They may have personality, emotion, agency, and the power to transform lives. They transmit stories and imagery across time, which we can receive, elaborate, and re-transmit in our own new form. That is what I try to convey in The Soul of Place.

LOVING MODIGLIANI

PARIS 1920 Dying just 48 hours after her  husband, Jeanne Hebuterne—wife and muse of the celebrated painter Amedeo Modigliani and an artist in her own right — haunts their shared studio, watching as her legacy is erased. Decades later, a young art history student travels across Europe to rescue Jeanne's work from obscurity. A ghost story, love story, and a search for a missing masterpiece. UNIVERSAL PURCHASE LINK HERE

SIGNATURES IN STONE: A Bomarzo Mystery

OVERALL WINNER
former  DAPHNE DU MAURIER AWARDS! "Scary and satisfying ...I loved this novel....Lappin's people are as dangerously compelling as her Italy." -- Nina Auerbach *****amazon reviews
"Readers looking for an intelligent summer mystery will find much to savor here."—Wilda Williams, Library Journal
Written in an elegant, relaxed style, with a plot that peels back slowly, the book bewitches... Mystery Scene Magazine
"Lappin is a modern day Agatha Christie with prose that is like eating dark chocolate or sipping a glass of fine wine — the story continues to entice your senses and simply gets better and better the more you partake. I Love a Mystery
"Recommended! " Midwest Book Review

"Linda Lappin's Signatures in Stone boasts a remarkable knitting of mystery and romance, a delicate and intricately concocted layering of mysteries" Gently Read

"Lappin has populated a dilapidated villa and its adjacent park of grotesque sculptures with a vivid group of victims and suspects who turn out to be mysteries in themselves, While the primary pleasures of Signatures in Stone are its places and its people, the story itself satisfies because its twists are engrained in the chasms of its setting and its characters." Walter Cummins, Rain Taxi

Read the review from Library Journal

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KATHERINE'S WISH

A Novel About the Life of Katherine Mansfield Gold Medal Winner, IPPY Awards. Honorable Mention Hoffer Awards

"Katherine’s Wish is first and foremost the compelling story of an artist fighting against time. Long after the last page, thoughts of her linger like an exotic scent, as if, anticipating other guests, she simply stepped from the room to display a vase of flowers or a platter’s mounded figs. --Joyce J. Townsend, Rain Taxi

"Linda Lappin has immersed herself in Mansfield's life, and merged from it with a story to to narrate on her own terms, a fiction charged with the enthusiasm of a good researcher, and carried through with a novelist's verve." Vincent O'Sullivan, editor The Letters of Katherine Mansfield Vol V

"The more Katherine Mansfield approaches death, the more she comes to life in Linda Lappin’s Katherine’s Wish. Lappin’s achievement is to succeed where medicine failed and, through her words, give Katherine Mansfield ongoing life. " Walter Cummins The Literary Review

Lappin's intensely imagined novel will satisfy readers unfamiliar with Mansfield as well as those already intrigued by her. Desmond O' Grady, South China Post

The historical person of Jeanne Hébuterne was a headstrong young girl with a big dream – to become a painter, almost unheard of in her time, when professional women artists were rare. Her meeting with the magnetic Modigliani plunged her into a love affair from which there was no untangling. She followed him to the death. That real-life tragedy is not the sole focus of Loving Modigliani, which is also the story of Jeanne's evolution in the afterlife, her unearthly reunion with Modigliani, and her transformation through time to the star status she enjoys today as an artist. Loving Modigliani is a genre-bending novel, blending elements of fantasy, historical fiction, gothic, mystery, and suspense.

 

Featured on MessyNessyChic.Com & on The DailyArt Magazine ... Reviewed by the Historical Novel Society Featured on Art in Fiction ... A Da Vinci Art Alliance Bookclub Pick... Reviewed in the Italian Insider ...

"Longing to visit Paris, but can't travel now? This book will take you there,  bringing alive the streets and cafés of Montparnasse, the Marais, and the Île St-Louis in full multi-sensory detail — the history, clothes, sounds, smells, textures, and daily rhythms — of the past and present."  – Meredith Mullins, Bonjour Paris.

 

"A part fantastical ghost story, part romance focuses on Modigliani's lover…Brilliantly researched, imaginative cross-genre historical fiction…The book's inventive afterlife is as vividly drawn as the streets of Paris." --Kirkus Reviews

 

4.9 STARS FROM INDIEREADER!  INDIE READER APPROVED:  LOVING MODIGLIANI: THE AFTERLIFE OF JEANNE HEBUTERNE is singularly unique and intensely ambitious and an utter joyride for any reader deciding to take the journey. ~Shari Simpson for IndieReader

 

"The three female narrators–the artist, the scholar and the curator–present three versions of one female energy, thus we never really know the names of anyone except Jeanne Hebuterne."--Shari Simpson IndieReader

 

 "There is much to love about this novel: If you've heard only the abridged drama of Modigliani and Jeanne as star-crossed lovers who died too soon, you will gain a deeper perspective with the story now told. If you enjoy a compelling mystery, you will be swept in and will find that not all the puzzles will be easily solved. You will have to rouse your inner sleuth.If you want desperately to believe in the afterlife, the journey presented will give you hope. And if you are a supporter of the under-appreciated women artists of their time, you will applaud Lappin's choice of subject and you'll love the novel's ending." -- Meredith Mullins, Bonjour Paris.