Blood & Beauty

Sarah Dunant is a cultural commentator, award-winning thriller writer and author of a trilogy of novels set in renaissance Italy exploring women's lives through art, sex and religion.

A wonderful novel - taking you deep into the world of Renaissance passion and the Renaissance papacy. Part of me was happily lost in the time travel, part of me repeatedly struck by how vividly ancient Rome met modern Rome, and how the city of history came to life. -- Mary Beard Blood & Beauty is a fascinating read full of vivid detail and human pathos. Dunant opens a window into the extraordinary machinations and skullduggery of the Borgias and provides us with a richness of description that beautifully locates them within their own time. -- Amanda Foreman What a marvellous feast of vices and desires Sarah Dunant gives us in Blood & Beauty - lust and ambition, passion and power, destiny born and bought. The Borgias are arguably the most intriguing and ruthless family in all of history, and Dunant brings them ravishingly, bristlingly to life. Absolutely convincing on every page. I was enthralled. -- Paula McLain, author of The Paris Wife An ambitious, thrilling read from a novelist at the height of her powers. The Borgias leap from the page ... the book offers total immersion in an alien Rome The Times