Bitter Greens

Bitter Greens is the winner of the 2015 American Libraries Association prize for Historical Fiction.

"A lovely stew of sex, fairytales and, well, sex really." – The Age.

An exquisite rendering of the story behind the Rapunzel fairy tale, Bitter Greens follows Charlotte-Rose de la Force, who has been banished from the court of Versailles by the Sun King, Louis XIV, after a series of scandalous love affairs. She finds comfort in the company of an old nun, Sœur Seraphina, who reveals the tale of a young girl sold by her parents for a handful of bitter greens a hundred years earlier.

When Margherita's father steals a handful of parsley, wintercress, and rapunzel from the walled garden of the courtesan Selena Leonelli, he is faced with the threat of having both hands cut off unless he and his wife surrender their little girl.

Selena, known as the famous red-haired muse of the artist Tiziano—first painted by him in 1512 and consistently inspiring him until his death sixty-four years later—commands a formidable presence. Called La Strega Bella, she stands at the heart of Renaissance life in Venice, a world suffused with beauty and danger, seduction and betrayal, love and superstition.

Locked away in a tower and growing into womanhood, Margherita clings to hope, singing in the belief that...