Book Summary and Reviews of Loyalty by Lisa Scottoline

Loyalty by Lisa Scottoline

Loyalty

by Lisa Scottoline

  • Published:
  • Mar 2023, 432 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

#1 bestselling author Lisa Scottoline presents Loyalty, an emotional, action-packed epic of love and justice, set during the rise of the Mafia in Sicily.

Loyalty can save a soul—or destroy one.

Franco Fiorvanti is a handsome lemon grower toiling on the estate of a baron. He dreams of owning his own grove, but the rigid class system of Sicily thwarts his ambition. Determined to secure a better future, Franco will do anything to prove his loyalty to the baron. But when the baron asks him to kidnap a little boy named Dante, Franco makes a decision that will change his life—and even the history of Sicily—forever.

Gaetano Catalano is an idealistic young lawyer whose devotion to justice is tantamount to a calling. He's a member of the Beati Paoli, a real-life secret society of aristocrats who investigate crime in Palermo, a city riddled with graft. Gaetano sets out to find the boy and punish the kidnapper, but his mission leads him to a darker place than he had ever imagined.

Meanwhile, Mafalda Pancari is a new mother rejoicing at the birth of her daughter, Lucia, when disaster strikes. And Alfredo D'Antonio is a reclusive goatherd under constant threat of being discovered as a Jew. How the lives of these unforgettable characters collide makes Loyalty an epic tale of good versus evil, as the story twists and turns to its monumental showdown.

Readers will be transported to the dramatic and ruggedly beautiful island of Sicily, the jewel of the Mediterranean, where lush lemon groves and mouth-watering cuisine contrast with a turbulent history of colonization and corruption. Scottoline brings her decades of thriller writing to historical fiction, creating in Loyalty a singular novel that no reader will be able to put down.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Scottoline brings nineteenth-century Sicily alive in this historical thriller...Every scene is a full sensory experience, as Scottoline weaves lemon-scented breezes, the ocean's sounds, and sun-baked piazza stones into a timeless, tragedy-strewn story of love, power, and redemption. History fans will appreciate the novel's well-researched foundation, especially concerning the origins of the Sicilian Mafia and early mental-health institutions." —Booklist (starred)

"Scottoline brings her characters to life, instilling them with wit and intellect as they navigate the corruption of Sicily's law enforcement. Historical crime fiction fans will be riveted." —Publishers Weekly

"A powerful, poignant exploration about the rise of the Mafia in Sicily, Lisa Scottoline's Loyalty is a gripping, compulsively readable tale of courage, loyalty, family secrets, and the price of honor.  An unputdownable piece of historical fiction that puts Scottoline's talent for writing twisty plots and unforgettable characters on full display." —Kristin Hannah, author of The Four Winds

"A gripping, up-all-night novel of power and vengeance in a violent and beautiful land. Loyalty finds Lisa Scottoline on new turf—and firing on all cylinders. Her versatility as a writer knows no bounds." —Daniel Silva, author of Portrait of an Unknown Woman

This information about Loyalty was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Lisa Scottoline

Lisa Scottoline is the number-one bestselling and Edgar Award–winning author of thirty-five novels. A former president of Mystery Writers of America, she has thirty million copies of her books in print and has been published in thirty-five countries. Her books have been optioned for film and television, and she has also co-authored a series of humorous memoirs with her daughter, novelist Francesca Serritella. A former lawyer, Scottoline taught a course she developed, "Justice & Fiction," at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, her alma mater. She lives on a farm outside Philadelphia with an array of disobedient pets.

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