Our book club is reading The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant, an historical novel, set in the age of the Medici in Italy. The first chapter is one of the most arresting I've read; it grabbed me, sucked me in. I read in the British Council's Arts online site http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth32that she is known as a detective writer, and this is her first historical novel. She has certainly set up the mystery to be solved in this first chapter--huge snake tatoo, 'tumor' of entrails, all in a nunnery. Whoa.
