Robert Hellenga

"Margot Harrington is an American volunteer, an expert at book conservancy. While struggling to save a waterlogged convent library, she discovers a fabulous collection of sixteen erotic drawings by Giulio Romano that accompany sixteen of Pietro Aretino's steamy sonnets. When it was published over four centuries ago, the Vatican mandated that all copies be destroyed. Only this volume remains. The abbess begs Margot to save the abbey's finances by secretly...

An American family disintegrates after a daughter is killed in an Italian terrorist bomb in 1980s Bologna. The mother enters a convent, the father has an affair with the daughter of his mistress, the remaining children leave. The climax comes when the father meets the woman who placed the bomb and discovers what prompts people to become killers.

"The Truth About Death, the title novella of this virtuosic collection, is a masterpiece of sardonic humor that confronts Death head on and emerges bloody but unbowed. Simon, an undertaker, embalms his father and is facing his own death. Louisa, Simon's mother, makes peace with her husband over his dead body in a cooler in the basement of the funeral home. Simon contemplates the mystery of death over a plate of spaghetti cacio e pepe in Rome with...