On Tuesday, April 29th, at 7:00 PM, writer Vanessa Montfort will be at our downtown Nervión bookstore signing her book "La Toffana," recognized with the 2025 Primavera Prize.

A fascinating novel about Giulia Toffana: for some, the first serial killer in history; for others, a woman who served justice. The story of three women in 17th-century Rome whose dangerous family secret was passed down from generation to generation.

"They've taken Toffana! Free Toffana!" women shout in the streets of Papal Rome, an eternally corrupt city in the midst of the artistic and Galilean revolution. It's February 1658, and Giulia Toffana, an apothecary, daughter of the alchemist Theophania D'Adamo, her own daughter Gironima Carrozzi, the Astrologer of the Lungara, and her soul mate Giovanna De Grandis, a former prostitute, are escorted by the guards of the Holy Office for interrogation after leaving the protection of the convent that sheltered them.

Stefano Bracchi, a young and professional inquisitor, will be in charge of a case that could mean his promotion within the Vatican. Why this deployment? After the unjust death of her mother, Giulia swore an oath in her native Palermo: she would dedicate her life to helping young women condemned to marry at fourteen to men three times their age and to bear child after child until exhaustion. The new legislation no longer allows women to have any trade or business, and the systematic abuse that ends in childbirth or in "domestic accidents" is the main cause of death. To keep that promise, she brought a family secret with her to Rome in a velvet notebook: the formula for Acqua Toffana, the mere mention of which would provoke terror for centuries.

Scientist, vigilante, godmother of a female organized crime network that rebelled against the State of Rome and considered the first serial killer in history, La Toffana resurrects for the first time in this imposing historical novel of judicial suspense thanks to the pen of Vanessa Montfort and the narrative display that characterizes her: memorable characters and a passionate plot that reflects on the role of women, of the family and the dangers of revenge and institutional violence, whose roots sprout in a time of special persecution of women that, at times, does not seem so distant.

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