The Garden of Angels

A yellowing manuscript. A dark family secret. A tale of blood and madness . . . Haunting and atmospheric, The Garden of Angels is at once an intimate story of family secrets and betrayals, and a dark, twisty tale of ordinary Venetians caught up in the horrors of the Second World War: neither heroes nor villains, but somewhere in-between.

Nico Uccello's grandfather is dying, and from his deathbed he gives Nico an unwelcome gift: a yellowing manuscript, containing a story Nico must keep secret from his father. Nico loves his grandfather, but as the heart-breaking tale of what really happened in Nazi-occupied Venice of 1943 unfolds, he begins to wonder if he ever knew him at all .

At his beloved Nonno Paolo's 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 Venice's 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 he's waited his whole life to share.

When a Jewish classmate is attacked by bullies, Nico just watches - earning him a week's 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 grandfather's life: when Paolo's support for a murdered Jewish woman brings him into the sights of the city's underground resistance. Hooked and unsettled, Nico can't stop reading - but he soon wonders if he ever knew his beloved grandfather at all.