Garden of Venus

Young, beautiful, fallen, Sophie Glavani has brought shame on her family. She realises that she must now learn the art of seduction in order to survive in turbulent times.
Her beauty and charm are so great that the world is entranced. Men are driven to madness, women moved to jealousy. She leads the King of Poland in the Polonaise.
Now, dying and surrounded by her family, Sophie relives her life's dance for the final time. Her journey from fallen woman to Countess, the men she has captivated, the hearts she has broken. Eva Stachniak creates a brilliant eighteenth-century world and weaves compelling a tale of a courtesan's love, her life and her death.\nIn a saga that sweeps from the olive groves of Greece to the teeming bazaars of Istanbul, from a draughty Berlin palace to the inner chambers of Marie Antoinette's gilded Parisian boudoir, Garden of Venus is a story of an extraordinary life stitched into the fabric of one of the most tumultuous periods in European history. This is an exquisitely crafted novel, infused with passionate intelligence and graced with evocative, wholly convincing details of time and place.A brilliant second novel following her award-winning Necessary Lies, Eva Stachniak's Garden of Venus is an eminently satisfying and captivating read.\nFrom the Inside Flap\nAn alluring, exotic novel set in the early nineteenth century, based on the life and world of one of the most celebrated courtesans.\nFrom the Back Cover\nStories precede her. Whispers of delighted amusement at her exotic past. Some swear that she has been a sultan's odalisque. Others that she is a Greek princess. Princes praise her exquisite manners and her pleasing ways. And the King of Poland leads her in the polonaise.