Signatures in Stone

$18.00

In this novel, we meet four unlikely misfits seeking inspiration in the timeless Italian landscape. Soon, however, they find their destinies entangled in the meanders of the mysterious sculpture garden of Bomarzo with its freaks and monsters. “Linda Lappin’s Signatures in Stone boasts a remarkable knitting of mystery and romance, a delicate and intricately concocted layering of mysteries” -Gently Read

A 20 minute sample that begins benignly and develops into an intriguing, chilling mystery leaving one in want of hearing more:

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Description

In this novel, we meet four unlikely misfits seeking inspiration in the timeless Italian landscape. Soon, however, they find their destinies entangled in the meanders of the mysterious sculpture garden of Bomarzo with its freaks and monsters. Daphne, a writer with a hashish habit; Clive, an American gigolo and aspiring artist; Nigel, an English aristocrat down at the heels; and Finestone, a fly-by-night art historian all come together in a decrepit villa looked after by two Italian servants who are not what they seem. To find what they’re looking for, all the characters must descend into the depths of hell. But not everyone will make it out alive.

2014 Overall Winner DAPHNE DU MAURIER AWARD for excellence in Mystery Writing, also Winner in the Historical Mystery section of the Du Maurier Awards, from Romance Writers of America.

 

Linda Lappin: The search for the soul of place is one of my passions as traveler, writer, and writing teacher. My work is often inspired by places: islands, ruins, old houses and buildings, and the atmospheres found there. For several years, I have been researching the “genius loci,” the spirit or soul of place. The Romans and the Etruscans believed that every place–every mountain, field, body of water–had an indwelling spirit or soul, which was beneficial or harmful to human activity. And every house and household was believed to have a tutelary spirit. The soul of place was a force which shaped the character and atmosphere of a place and at the same time, an entity with which human beings were constantly interacting and communicating. This idea has stimulated me for a long time, and it has greatly influenced my writing. Visit Linda’s website for her books, awards and upcoming events: http://www.lindalappin.net/

Linda Lappin occasionally leads workshops based on her book which won the Nautilus Award in 2015 in the area of creativity.

The Soul of Place A Creative Writing Workbook: Ideas and Exercises for Conjuring the Genius Loci

Other award-winning novels: The Etruscan, a gothic tale set in 1922, Katherine’s Wish, dealing with the life of Katherine Mansfield in France.

Bio of Linda Lappin: Poet, novelist, and translator born in Tennessee in 1953. MFA: University of Iowa Writers Workshop, 1978. During her years at Iowa, she specialized in poetry with Florida poet Donald Justice. Her first volume of poetry, Wintering with the Abominable Snowman, was published in 1976 by the avant-garde press, ‘kayak,’ run by George Hitchcock in Santa Cruz, California in 1976. She received a Fulbright grant in 1978 to participate in a two-year Fulbright seminar in literary translation held in Rome at the Centro Studi Americani, under the directorship of Frank MacShane of Columbia University and William Weaver, the noted translator from Italian. The project pursued by Lappin in those years, a translation from the Italian of Carmelo Samonà’s novel, Brothers, won two prizes in literary translation in the United States: The Renato Poggioli Award in Translation from Italian given by the New York PEN club and a National Endowment for the Arts grant in translation in 1987. She was awarded a second translation grant from the NEA in 1996 for her work on Tuscan writer Federigo Tozzi. From 1987 to the year 2000, she published essays, poems, reviews, and short stories in many US and European publications, including several essays on women writers and artists of the 1920s, including Missing Person in Montparnasse, in the Literary Review, about the life of Jeanne Hébuterne, “Jane Heap and her Circle” in Prairie Schooner, dealing with the lives of Jane Heap and Margaret Anderson, founders of the Little Review and “Dada Queen in the Bad Boys’ Club, Baroness Elsa Von Freitag Loringhoven” in Southwest Review. Major themes in Lappin’s work include women’s biographies and autobiographies, expatriate writers in the 1920’s, and displacement. Bio from – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Lappin

Additional information

Weight 10.4 oz
Dimensions 5.5 × 0.5 × 8.5 in
Format

Paperback

Author

Linda Lappin

ISBN

978-1-929355-90-7

Amazon

http://a.co/9ajKmf8

Original Language

English

Publish Date

12/31/2015

Page/Word Count

280 pages

Awards

WINNER 2014 DAPHNE DU MAURIER AWARD for Excellence in Mystery and Suspense Writing

Imprint

Caravel

6 reviews for Signatures in Stone

  1. Wilda Williams, Library Journal

    “Deftly mixes fascinating art history and murder with an exotic atmospheric setting (the Bomarzo garden actually exists), dramatic historical period (1928 fascist Italy), and fully fleshed characters… Readers looking for an intelligent summer mystery will find much to savor here.” – Wilda Williams, Library Journal

  2. Midwest Book Review

    “Lappin is a modern day Agatha Christie with prose that is like eating dark chocolate or sipping a glass of fine wine. The story continues to entice your senses and simply gets better and better the more you partake. Not one to hurry to the plot, she unveils the scenes piece by piece, character by character and leaves her own signatures for you to find along the way… I Love a Mystery. Recommended!”

  3. Gently Read

    I Love a Mystery. Linda Lappin’s Signatures in Stone boasts a remarkable knitting of mystery and romance, a delicate and intricately concocted layering of mysteries…But not a romance of men, to be sure. Instead, she displays her own romance with Italy. Lappin lures the reader into the loins of Italy, describing it with a lust for its countryside and peculiarities as one might let on about a lover. What must not be neglected, and is perhaps part of the mission of the novel, is the uncanny resemblance that Daphne bears to Linda Lappin herself. Daphne, like Lappin, is a mystery novelist (whose series is also incidentally called Signatures), and of similar age and residence. Lappin is exercising the timeless maneuver of writing about writing…and writing what you know. But what can’t be denied is Lappin’s extraordinary skill with these moves, and moreover, her incredible display of multiple layering of mysteries in the piece. – Gently Read

  4. Mystery Scene Magazine

    “Written in an elegant, relaxed style, with a plot that peels back slowly, the book bewitches…”

  5. Nina Auerbach, amazon reviews

    “Scary and satisfying…I loved this novel…Lappin’s people are as dangerously compelling as her Italy.”

  6. Walter Cummins, Rain Taxi

    “Lappin has populated a dilapidated villa and its adjacent park of grotesque sculptures with a vivid group of victims and suspects who turn out to be mysteries in themselves, While the primary pleasures of Signatures in Stone are its places and its people, the story itself satisfies because its twists are engrained in the chasms of its setting and its characters.”

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