About this item
Burnt Siena is a suspenseful mystery combining a spectacular Italian setting with complicated art historical dilemmas. The story of Flora Garibaldi and the colorful Lorenzetti family will take the reader on a labyrinthine journey while probing family and professional loyalties that no amount of yellowed varnish can hideIn the magical and historically rich city of Siena, Italy, old paintings are as common as cobblestones. But what if some of those paintings are forgeries? And what if your employers at a respected firm of art conservators might be smuggling antiquities? After colleague and roommate Ernst Mann is found dead in the street below their apartment balcony, Flora Garibaldi suspects her bosses are crooks and that her new job is disintegrating into desiccated paint flakes.
About the Author
Sarah Wisseman (a.k.a. Sally Underhill) grew up in Evanston, Illinois and Weston Massachusetts. She remembers being surrounded by books all her life, especially moldy old Penguin paperbacks (Rex Stout, Dorothy Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, Josephine Tey) that were fought over by her parents. Her mother was a weaver and avid reader, and her father, Thomas Underhill, was a lawyer who wrote mysteries and crossword puzzles. Her son, Nick, has adopted the pen name of his deceased grandfather ("Tom Underhill") and writes historical fantasy in northern Michigan. Sarah hadn't a clue that she wanted to be an archaeologist until she traveled to Israel right after her freshman year in college. There she ate felafel, fell in love with Jerusalem, camped illegally on Masada, and spent a month at the excavation of biblical Beersheba. Once hooked by archaeology, she returned for her Junior Year Abroad at Tel Aviv University, an experience that eventually inspired Book 1, The Dead Sea Codex. Books 2 and 3, Bound for Eternity and The Fall of Augustus, were inspired by Sarah's job as a curator in a dusty attic museum. Book 4, The House of the Sphinx, was the result of a trip to Egypt in 2005.
