by 
Signatures in Stone
A Bomarzo Mystery
By Linda Lappin.
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Rome, Italy – Summer 2023 – Pleasure Boat Studio is thrilled to announce the release of the second edition of Linda Lappin’s celebrated novel, SIGNATURES IN STONE: A BOMARZO MYSTERY. This captivating suspense tale takes readers on a thrilling journey through the enigmatic Monster Park of Bomarzo, also known as the Sacred Wood, an extraordinary Baroque sculpture garden in Italy. With the 500th anniversary of the park’s creation approaching, this edition is accompanied by a magnificent new cover and a series of Tarot card illustrations by Santa Fe artist Carolyn Florek.
In SIGNATURES IN STONE, readers are transported to the atmospheric setting of the Monster Park of Bomarzo, a sixteenth-century garden adorned with mythical creatures believed to represent a terrifying journey into the realm of nightmares. Against this backdrop, four travelers find themselves intertwined in a fate-driven Italian holiday. Daphne, a British writer of occult mysteries, her down-on-his-luck aristocratic publisher Nigel, the aspiring artist and American gigolo Clive, and the art historian Professor Finestone, all converge in a dilapidated villa near the park. They are attended by rustic servants who harbor secrets of their own.
Professor Finestone has made a groundbreaking discovery, revealing that the garden was designed by one of Italy’s greatest artists as a transformative experience that delves into the shadow side of life. Over the centuries, the park’s meanders continue to influence the minds and destinies of those who venture within. As the group explores their heart’s desires amidst the haunting sculptures, they become entangled in a web of intrigue and danger. When Daphne, renowned for writing cozy murder tales, becomes the prime suspect in a shocking homicide, she must confront her own darkness and rely on her sleuthing skills to uncover the terrifying truth.
Linda Lappin’s gripping tale presents an intriguing exploration of gardens in Renaissance Italy, where they were regarded as tools for altering consciousness and changing destiny. The Monster Park of Bomarzo becomes the backdrop for a “Gothic-in-Wonderland” phantasmagoria, immersing readers in a suspenseful and thrilling journey.
Captivating critics and readers, SIGNATURES IN STONE, was the OVERALL WINNER in the DAPHNE DU MAURIER AWARDS for Excellence in Mystery and Suspense Writing – best mystery of 2013
“Scary and satisfying …I loved this novel….Lappin’s people are as dangerously compelling as her Italy.” —Nina Auerbach, author of Our Vampires, Ourselves *****amazon reviews
“Readers looking for an intelligent summer mystery will find much to savor here.” —Wilda Williams, Library Journal
“Written in an elegant, relaxed style, with a plot that peels back slowly, the book bewitches…”—Mystery Scene Magazine
“Lappin is a modern day Agatha Christie with prose that is like eating dark chocolate or sipping a glass of fine wine — the story continues to entice your senses and simply gets better and better the more you partake.”—I Love a Mystery
“Recommended!” —Midwest Book Review
“Linda Lappin’s Signatures in Stoneboasts a remarkable knitting of mystery and romance, a delicate and intricately concocted layering of mysteries.” —Gently Read
“Lappin has populated a dilapidated villa and its adjacent park of grotesque sculptures with a vivid group of victims and suspects who turn out to be mysteries in themselves, While the primary pleasures of Signatures in Stone are its places and its people, the story itself satisfies because its twists are engrained in the chasms of its setting and its characters.” —Walter Cummins, Rain Taxi
A Word from the Author
I have always been fascinated by the idea of gardens as texts, narrative landscapes –encoding messages, symbols, even astrological recipes for changing your fate. Now I live not far from Italy’s most mysterious story-telling garden: The Park of Monsters in Bomarzo, which provides the eerie atmosphere for Signatures in Stone. The park was created 500 years ago for Duke Vicino Orsini who dabbled in alchemy, and its purpose was to guide visitors into the depths of hell and out again along a journey of initiation and self-renewal. The identity of the artist who designed the park and its hallucinatory sculptures has been debated for centuries.
In my novel, crime writer Daphne DuBlanc comes to Bomarzo with other artists to write a new book, but ends up as the prime suspect for a murder that takes place in the park. Daphne has a theory that by reading signs or “signatures” scattered all around us, we can uncover hidden truths and even predict the future. She’ll have to use her extraordinary intuitive gifts and sleuthing skills to save her skin and solve the crime, and in doing so also will also discover the secret of the Park of Monsters – and of its destructive and redemptive power over all those who wander there.
(Linda Lappin, 2024)
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