MADDALENA AND THE DARK

s takes shape beneath the waters of Venice . . .

A darkness takes shape beneath the waters of Venice . . .
and somewhere in the Ospedale della Pietà,
there are two girls breathing beside each other,
legs entwined.

Venice, 1717. Before Maddalena arrived at the Ospedale della Pietà, Venice's most illustrious music school, fifteen-year-old orphan Luisa has only wanted one thing: to be the best at violin. Luisa is good at violin, but she is not the best. She has peers, but she does not have friends. Until Maddalena.

Sent to the Pietà until her noble family can find her a husband, Maddalena is cunning, passionate, and unlike anyone Luisa has ever met. Maddalena can promise the world to Luisa, and when she does, their fates intertwine.

But Maddalena has made a dangerous wager and, for both girls, there will be an unimaginable price to pay.

* * *

'Maddalena and the Dark is chocolate laced with poison. To read it is to fall under an enchantment . . . A sweeping, dark fairy tale about the violent hearts of teenage girls'
Katie Gutierrez

'A sumptuous feast of a novel, rich and strange and heady. Julia Fine is an extraordinary writer'
Kelly Link

'From its first sentence, this novel curled its crooked little witch's finger around my heart and still hasn't let go'
Amy Jo Burns

'A tense, slow-burning portrait of how desire too easily tangles with envy and the price we pay when we get what we want'
Isle McElroy