The Book of Madness and Cures

A Novel

By Regina O'Melveny (Trade Paperback, 2013)

A brilliant debut about a woman doctor in Renaissance Venice, forced to cross Europe in search of her father.

Gabriella Mondini is a rarity in 16^th century Venice: a woman who practices medicine. Her father, a renowned physician, has provided her entrée to this all-male profession, and inspired her at every turn. Then her father disappears and Gabriella faces a crisis: she is no longer permitted to treat her patients without her father's patronage. She sets out across Europe to find where-and why-he has gone. Following clues from his occasional enigmatic letters, Gabriella crosses border after border, probing the mystery of her father's flight, and opening new mysteries of her own. Not just mysteries of ailments and treatments, but ultimate mysteries of mortality, love, and the timeless human spirit.

Filled with medical lore and sensuous, vivid details of Renaissance life, THE BOOK OF MADNESS AND CURES is an intoxicating and unforgettable debut.

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- Format: Trade Paperback
- Price: $14.99 US/$16.50 CAN
- ISBN-13: 9780316195812
- On Sale Date: 06/18/2013
- Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
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Formats Available: Hardcover Book, Trade Paperback, Audiobook, Audiobook, Electronic Book
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A brilliant debut about a woman doctor in Renaissance Venice, forced to cross Europe in search of her father.

Regina O'Melveny's poetry has been published widely in literary journals, garnering several prizes. She grew up at the edge of pungent chaparral in La Mesa, California, and chose to enroll at Callison College--a school of International Studies at the University of the Pacific--almost solely based upon the fact that the second year would be spent in India. Thus began her many extended travels that would later inspire The Book of Madness and Cures, her first novel. She lives in Rancho Palos Verdes, California.

Regina O'Melveny on THE BOOK OF MADNESS AND CURES

"Regina O'Melveny's debut novel, The Book of Madness and Cures, is a marvelous, inventive story of a singular courageous woman on a quest to find her missing father. Set in the Renaissance, it explores the wonders, and dangers, of Europe and Asia Minor and recreates a world--exotic and familiar, sensuous and beguiling--where a defiant woman, practicing the ancient healing arts, is believed to be contrary to the laws of God and Man."
(Kathleen Kent, author of The Traitor's Wife and The Heretic's Daughter).