First published in 1987, this is the second book in the author's "Niccolo" series. The novel marks the coming of age of the hero, and his development in the treacherous world of medieval Europe's trade with the East.
Emily Graham knows what it's like to have enemies. The pretty New York attorney--a millionaire due to a lucky stock market break--has been sued by her greedy ex-husband and stalked by a man who thinks she helped his mother's murderer escape punishment. But when she buys her great-great-grandmother's childhood home in the sleepy resort town of Spring Lake, Emily thinks her new life will be saner, even though five other young women, including Emily's ancestor Madeline Shapley, have disappeared from Spring Lake under creepy circumstances over the past century.
The Torrents of Spring was written when Turgenev was in his fifties and is considered to be partly autobiographical. Also known as Spring Torrents, The Torrents of Spring focuses on the main protagonist Dimitry Sanin, a young Russian landowner who on his travels to Germany meets and falls in love with Gemma, an Italian living in Frankfurt. After winning her heart Sanin decides to sell off his estate in Russia and move to Frankfurt to be close to her.
Being able to detect black magic isn't all tea and crumpets—and for Theodosia Throckmorton, it can be a decidedly tricky business! When Sticky Will drags Theo to a magic show featuring the Great Awi Bubu, she quickly senses there is more to the magician than he lets on, setting in motion a chain of events she never could have bargained for. Meanwhile, back at the Museum of Legends and Antiquities, Henry is home for the spring holidays and makes an accidental discovery of an artifact that alchemists have been hunting for centuries. Soon, every black-cloaked occultist in London is trying to get their hands on it . . .
A wise research psychiatrist once told me that he had identified life's greatest problem: How to balance self and others, or your need for independence with your need for relationship? Since writing Rapt, I've come to believe that we now face a fundamental psychological challenge of a different sort: How to balance your need to know—for the first time in history, fed by a bottomless spring of electronic information, from e-mail to Wikipedia--with your need to be?
