Of Love and Evil

Anne Rice's extraordinary new novel summons up for us the world of fifteenth-century Rome: of Michelangelo and Raphael, of the Holy Inquisition and of Leo X, second son of a Medici, holding forth on the papal throne . . . a city of domes and rooftop gardens and rising towers. And into this time, into this century, Toby O'Dare, former government assassin is summoned, by the angel Malchiah, to solve a terrible crime of poisoning and to search out the truth about a haunting by an earthbound restless spirit -- a diabolical dybbuk. In the fullness of the high Italian Renaissance, Toby is plunged into this rich age as a lutenist sent to charm and calm this troublesome spirit . . . He soon discovers himself in the midst of dark plots and counter-plots surrounded by a darker and more dangerous threat as the veil of ecclesiastical terror closes in around him. As Toby once again embarks on a powerful journey of atonement, he is reconnected with his own past, with matters light and dark, fierce and tender, with the promise of salvation and with a deeper and richer vision of love. object width="480" height="295"param name="movie" value="//www.youtube.com/v/KelE0n_juuE?fs=1andamp;hl=en_GBandamp;rel=0andamp;color1=0x2b405bandamp;color2=0x6b8ab6"/paramparam name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/paramparam name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"/paramembed src="//www.youtube.com/v/KelE0n_juuE?fs=1andamp;hl=en_GBandamp;rel=0andamp;color1=0x2b405bandamp;color2=0x6b8ab6" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="295"/embed/object