VALERIE MARTIN - Contact

Selected Works

Fiction

A timeless story of family, war, art, and betrayal set around an ancient, ancestral home in the Tuscany

A captivating, atmospheric return to historical fiction that is every bit as convincing and engrossing as Martin's landmark Mary Reilly.

TRESPASS

Trespass is the bracing, tender story of two families, both suspicious, territorial, and naïve in their confidence that they are free of the past

SALVATION

Inspired by the Italian frescoes that depict the life of St. Francis of Assisi, Valerie Martin examines the life of Francesco di Pietro Bernardone in a series of vivid "panels" that rediscover the saint in moments both crucial and ordinary. Drawing from myriad sources, she begins in the dark, final days, with a suffering Francesco on the verge of death, then shows us the unwashed and innocent revolutionary, unafraid to lecture a pope. We see his mystical friendship with Chiara di Offreducci, a nobleman's daughter who turns her back on the world to join him, and finally, the frivolous young Francesco on the deserted road where his encounter with a leper leads him to an ecstatic embrace of God. Salvation is at once an illumination of the medieval world and a portrait of an enduring icon of the Western imagination.

PROPERTY

Set in the surreal heat of the antebellum south during a slave rebellion, Property takes the form of a dramatic monologue, bringing to the page a voice rarely heard in American fiction: the voice of a woman slaveholder. Manon Gaudet is pretty and petulant, self-absorbed and bored. She has come to a sugar plantation west of New Orleans as a bride, bringing with her a prized piece of property, the young slave Sarah, only to see Sarah become her husband's mistress and bear his child. As the whispers of a slave rebellion grow louder and more threatening, Manon speaks to us of her past and her present, her longings and dreams in an uncensored, nerve-wracked, and perverse confession direct from the heart of moral darkness.

MARY REILLY

Faithfully weaving in details from Robert Louis Stevenson's classic story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Valerie Martin introduces an original and captivating character: Mary Reilly, Jekyll's dutiful and intelligent housemaid. Mary is a survivor, scarred but strong, familiar with evil, yet capable of devotion and love. As a bond grows between Mary and her tortured employer, she is sent on errands to unsavory districts of London and entrusted with secrets she would rather not know

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