Past loves are like ghosts. They haunt you forever. The stunning new novel from the bestselling author of The Masterpiece and Tuscan Rose.

I was war-weary, sad and officially divorced - and that was a recipe for recklessness.

Rome 1951. Veronica Gold is in the city as the correspondent for Vogue magazine. As Italy tries to shake off its dark fascist past and promote itself as the most glamorous nation in Europe, so too does Veronica try to forget the horrific memories of her time as a war reporter attached to the Eighth Army at the brutal height of the Second World War.

But just as she hopes to lose herself in la dolce vita, three men appear in her life. Lyle Cooper, her ex-husband and an American diplomat; Marcello Fabbri, an archaeologist and one-time partisan now working in the ruins of Pompeii; and the dashing Count Carlo Durazzo, husband of Veronica's estranged friend, the enigmatic heiress Emerald Evergreen.

Complicated feelings arise, but before Veronica can resolve them, one of these three men is murdered. Veronica is quickly drawn into a sphere of spies and a world on the edge of nuclear war, one where nothing and nobody is quite as they seem.

'Belinda Alexandra is a master at keeping the pages turning' Herald Sun