The Orphan of Florence by Jeanne Kalogridis

But despite Giulia saying that she didn’t care about, Cecilia, a friend from the orphanage and Tommaso, her six-year-old pickpocketing sidekick, she did. Loving people only caused agonizing pain, when they left and they always left. Giulia had sworn off caring for people years ago. Ser Abramo introduced Giulia into his world of magic, intrigue, and peril. What Giulia didn’t realize at the time was that Ser Abramo was the infamous Magician.

It was dangerous work, but she would be well compensated. Giulia was later informed by Ser Abramo that she would be the new courier. The gentleman, Ser Abramo whom Giulia had stolen from, told the arresting officer, that he would prefer to take the lad into his home, rather than have the boy jailed. The Orphan of Florence is a well-written, dark historical fiction that takes place during the turbulent years of the 1400’s, in Florence, Italy.Īfter two years of surviving on the streets in Florence, disguised as a boy, the orphan, Giulia, was caught pickpocketing an old man. Accused of the Magician's murder, Giulia is pursued by the handsome policeman Niccolo, Lorenzo's henchmen, and foreign spies, and in order to survive, she must not only solve the mystery of the mystery of the Magician's murder, but that of her own past. When Giulia's involvement with him ends with his murder, she's drawn into a treacherous web of espionage and deceit involving the forces of Rome, Naples, and a man known as Lorenzo the Magnificent. She accepts the job and begins smuggling his talismans throughout the city.īut the talismans are not what they seem, and neither is the Magician. But his identity is secret-he is known only as 'the Magician of Florence'-and he is in need of an assistant. The man claims to be a cabalist, a student of Jewish mysticism and ritual magic, who works for the most powerful families in Florence. Now, after spending two years as a successful pickpocket, an old man catches her about to make off with his purse, and rather than having her carted off to prison he offers her a business proposition. She chose neither, and after refusing an elderly suitor, Giulia escaped onto the streets of Florence. Raised in Florence's famous Ospedale degli Innocenti, her probing questions and insubordinate behavior made her an unwelcome presence, and at the age of fifteen, she was given an awful choice: become a nun, or be married off to a man she didn't love. In this irresistible historical novel set in the turbulent world of the Medicis, a young woman finds herself driven from pick-pocketing to espionage when she meets a mysterious man.

The Orphan of Florence by Jeanne Kalogridis