After three abruptly ended marriages, Aurora is ready to lose her dreary black trouser-suit and find refuge in the Tuscan sun. It's her new eau de nil frock that she sheds, however, when she finds herself in the hotel room of the disconcertingly magnetic Father Michael. He rides a Harley Davidson, and he may not be a priest at all. One thing is certain, Aurora's radical friend Leonora is now the head of the local convent, even if Aurora can't imagine what an abbess might want with her gun.

Michele Robertsis the author of 11 novels, including Daughters of the House, which was short-listed for the Booker Prize and winner of the WHSmith Literary Award. She lives in England.

"Roberts exhibits a jaunty sense of the absurd in her winking 12th novel, which follows the capers of Aurora, a suspiciously thrice-widowed Brit who takes a holiday in Padenza, Italy, following the death of her third husband. At the invitation of her best friend Leonora, an irreverent feminist abbess, Aurora settles in at a Padenza convent. Roberts (Booker-shortlisted for Daughters of the House) humorously guns for the Catholic Church-Aurora's nunnery getaway turns out to be anything but chaste. She embarks on a steamy affair with Father Michael, who may not be what he seems (a priest), and enjoys a flirtatious friendship with the local museum director Frederico Pagan, also not exactly who Aurora thinks he is (gay). The twisting, turning plot-involving drug smuggling, museum theft, and Aurora's late mother's gun-plus Aurora's Emma Bovary-esque tendency to live her life through lessons plucked from fiction, make for more sophisticated reading than a summary suggests. Though overly reliant on shock tactics and exaggerated psychological abnormality, Roberts provides a puzzle-like pleasure in story and character, and a memorable, if sensationalized main character whose attempts to define herself through men have left her dangerously empty and disappointed." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Michle Roberts is the author of eleven novels, including Daughters of the House, which was short-listed for the Booker Prize and winner of the WHSmith Literary Award, and Reader, I Married Him, also published by Pegasus Books. She lives in England.