Stone Virgin

Jacket Notes:  In its romantic and dangerous tour of history, Barry Unsworth's ‘Stone Virgin’ rivals A. S. Byatt's ‘Possession’. A mysterious sculpture of a beautiful and erotic Madonna holds the key to the Fornarini family's secrets. When Simon Raikes, a conservation expert, tries to restore her, he is swept under the statue's spell and also swept under the spell of the seductive Chiara Litsov, a member a famous sculptor. Raikes finds himself losing all moral grounding as his love for statue and woman intertwine in lust and murder.
(© W.W. Norton & Company)