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The bestselling author of Blood and Beauty returns with another captivating novel about Renaissance Italy and one of history s most notorious families. Before the Corleones, before the Lannisters, there was the Borgias. The ferocious rise of the Borgia family in Rome has taken the country by surprise, as Pope Alexander VI Rodrigo Borgia openly wields his illegitimate children as dynastic weapons: His son Cesare, the arrogant, sadistic leader of a victorious mercenary army, and his scandal-soaked daughter, Lucrezia, a pawn in the marriage game. In Florence, a city once celebrated for her artistic wealth and learning, the people lament what has been lost after the mad monk Savonarola s pious reign. Politics is a blood sport; violence an acceptable form of diplomacy.