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by Giovanni De Feo
An "enthralling" (Genevieve Cogman, author of The Invisible Library and Elusive) Italian-inspired gothic historical fantasy about a young woman who finds her power in the nocturnal realm that lurks beneath her town.
Just beyond the waking edges of Lucerìa, an 18th-century town in the kingdom of Naples, lies the Night: an enigmatic fiefdom governed by seven immortals and fueled by Moira, the power to reshape one's destiny.
On this porous border separating Day from Night, Oriana spends her time fantasizing about becoming a smith in her father's forge and eavesdropping on whispered tales of beasts and men who roam the nocturnal realm. But in the Night, these stories come alive, as Oriana saw for herself after she inadvertently trespassed into the Secret Market of the Dead, where vendors hawk Moira to those desperate enough to accept its immeasurably steep price.
Years later, when her father chooses her twin brother to succeed him, Oriana challenges her sibling to a series of trials to determine the forge's true heir. But as the twins' fierce competition escalates, with the town and her own family set firmly against her, Oriana realizes that to break free from the stifling confines of Day, she must once again embrace the Night—and, as always, everything comes with a cost.
"DeFeo crafts a sumptuous folkloric excursion into the depths of human creativity...The worldbuilding is lush and extraordinary, and a welter of motives and schemes keep the pages flying. It's a feast for the imagination." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"I loved this book. The Secret Market of the Dead is an enthralling story about folk tales, urban legends, and myths, that in the end became a myth of its own. I couldn't put it down." —Genevieve Cogman, author of The Invisible Library and Elusive
"Take a wrong turn in Lucerìa, and you may become lost in the Night, an intoxicating realm of fanged fairytale overflowing with poetry and menace. Alas, I am Night's latest victim...and I don't even want to be rescued." —Frances Hardinge, author of Fly by Night and The Forest of a Thousand Eyes
This information about The Secret Market of the Dead was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Giovanni De Feo is a fabulist, novelist, and comic book writer. He previously taught literature at International Baccalaureate schools in England and Holland. Currently, he lives in Bologna, Italy, where he is also a performing storyteller with a repertoire of Italian folktales.
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