The Garden of Angels

About this book

At his beloved Nonno Paolos deathbed fifteen-year-old Nico receives a gift that will change his life forever: a yellowing manuscript which tells the haunting twisty tale of what really happened to his grandfather in Nazi-occupied Venice in 1943. A Times Best Thriller Book of 2022 The Palazzo Colombina is home to the Uccello family: three generations of men trapped together in the dusty palace on Venices Grand Canal. Awkward fifteen-year-old Nico. His distant business-focused father. And his beloved grandfather Paolo. Paolo is dying. But before he passes he has secrets hes waited his whole life to share. When a Jewish classmate is attacked by bullies Nico just watches earning him a weeks suspension and a typed yellowing manuscript from his frail Nonno Paolo. A history lesson his grandfather says. A secret he must keep from his father. A tale of blood and madness . . . Nico is transported back to the Venice of 1943 an occupied city seething under its Nazi overlords and to the defining moment of his grandfathers life: when Paolos support for a murdered Jewish woman brings him into the sights of the citys underground resistance. Hooked and unsettled Nico cant stop reading but he soon wonders if he ever knew his beloved grandfather at all.