The Art Of Falling

A romantic historical novel about love and identity, set simultaneously in modern day Tuscany and in an Italy ravaged by World War Two. A sweeping wartime love story that is a must-buy for fans of Captain Corelli's Mandolin and Birdsong.

A superbly crafted novel that deserves to be called the new Captain Corelli or perhaps the new Birdsong...Moving, elegiac and lyrical

This is a most wonderful novel. Evocative and haunting - it will keep you enthralled and intrigued right to the end

A real treat to enjoy, best washed down with a big glass of Chianti and bucket of olives

The scenes in the Italian countryside are beautifully written and the psychology of the characters are absolutely convincing. I was moved to tears

A gracefully written narrative, ideal for those interested in knowing the Vietnam story and looking for a measured analysis of these still hotly contested events

After graduating from Trinity College, Cambridge, Deborah Lawrenson worked as a journalist on the Kentish Times, the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday. She was also the London Section editor of Woman's Journal magazine. She has written three previous novels: The Moonbathers (1998) and the newspaper satires Hot Gossip (1994) and Idol Chatter (1995).

In 1944 Tom Wainwright, a British soldier, arrives in the small Italian town of Petriano. The war is nearly over, and in the lull before the Allied troops move further north to capture Florence Tom forges a friendship with the Parini family - and in particular with the eldest daughter, Giuliana. When the war ends he chooses to stay in Italy, planning to build a life with the woman with whom he has fallen deeply in love, but in the chaotic, tragic fallout of the end of the Second World War his hopes are dashed. 
 
Fifty years later Isabel Wainwright, Tom's daughter, sets off for Petriano herself, to attend a ceremony naming a piazza in her father's honour. But Isabel isn't so much going to represent her father as to try and find him - for she and her mother have heard nothing of him since, nearly twenty years earlier, he went out one day and never returned. She doesn't even know whether her father is dead or alive, but hopes that by discovering something of his past, she can build a picture of the man she hardly knew.

Deborah Lawrenson

Sometimes the key to the future lies in the past . . . 
 
In the horseshoe bay of Kalami in Corfu, a tumultuous love affair begins between a renowned novelist and a woman escaping scandal. Years later, her daughter Melissa, running from her own past, returns to the island ... 
 
Melissa's life in England is in disarray. There are cracks in her perfect marriage, and her elderly mother, Elizabeth, is losing her memory and slowly drifting away. In the last glimmers of lucidity, Elizabeth presents her daughter with a gift that suggests a very secret history - one that leads Melissa to Kalami, where Julian Adie, poet, traveller and novelist, once lived. 
 
But what is the connection between Adie - an alluring hedonist who discarded four wives - and Melissa's mother Elizabeth? As Melissa chases Adie's shadow across the golden places he loved, she finds her mother may not have been the person she thought. Forced to question morality, loyalty and her own unwillingness to let love in, Melissa is gradually led to a dramatic re-evaluation of her own life.

Deborah Lawrenson

Praise for Songs of Blue and Gold

Evocative and beautifully written

Books by Deborah Lawrenson

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter