Book cover of The Serpent and the Pearl

Book description

A gripping novel about history’s most infamous family—The Borgias—and an innocent girl pulled into their treacherous rise to power, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Alice Network and The Diamond Eye.

Rome, 1492. The Holy City is drenched with blood and teeming with secrets. A pope lies…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Serpent and the Pearl as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

While this novel moves effortlessly between three narrators, I loved that one of them is plucked straight from the dusty pages of history. While Lucrezia Borgia typically gets plenty of press, her contemporary Giulia Farnese was the beautiful young woman who didn’t have a choice in becoming the mistress of Cardinal Borgia, who became Pope Alexander VI. Here we see her learning to wade through Italian politics at the height of Borgia treachery.

From Stephanie's list on forgotten women in history.

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German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…

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