Description: When Lewis Little first gazes out the window of his airless attic room and over the roofs of Paris, he has no secrets -- only theories, plans, and schemes, which he records in a notebook. After all, he is just a thirteen-year-old boy spending the summer in Paris with his mother, Alice, who is translating the latest medieval romance by Valentina Gavrilovich, the bestselling novelist and exotic Russian emigre. But from the moment Valentina, golden-skinned and exquisitely scented, beckons from a spindly sofa, Lewis floats on a ribbon of Russian cigarette smoke into a delicious new world of passion and intrigue. At first, the mysteries are of the charming, everyday sort: the origins of saffron sauce, the tastes and names of lipstick. When Valentina mysteriously disappears, however, and Lewis takes it upon himself to find her, glorious secrets turn ominous, and Lewis, caught up in a most unusual (and perilous) romance, leaves childhood behind forever. Shining with wit and color, this luscious new novel by the author of Restoration is a bittersweet valentine to love and loss.

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