Inspired by the fresco cycles that depict the life of St. Francis of Assisi, acclaimed author Valerie Martin tells the life of Francesco di Pietro Bernardone in a series of vividly realized panels of moments both crucial and ordinary. Drawing from myriad sources and moving in reverse chronological order, she begins in the dark, final days, with a suffering Francesco on the verge of death, then shows us the unwashed and innocent revolutionary, unafraid to lecture a pope on Christ s message. We see his mystical friendship with Chiara di Offreducci, a nobleman s daughter who turns her back on...

Valerie Martin s Property delivers an eerily mesmerizing inquiry into slavery s venomous effects on the owner and the owned. The year is 1828, the setting a Louisiana sugar plantation where Manon Gaudet, pretty, bitterly intelligent, and monstrously self-absorbed, seethes under the dominion of her boorish husband. In particular his relationship with her slave Sarah, who is both his victim and his mistress.
Exploring the permutations of Manon s own obsession with Sarah against the backdrop of an impending slave rebellion, Property unfolds with the speed and menace of heat...

Three surprising women, their lives riven by divorce both literal and metaphorical: Ellen Clayton, reeling from her husband's decision to leave her after twenty years, finds meaning in caring for her teenage daughters and in her work as the veterinarian at the New Orleans Zoo. Her young assistant Camille, preyed on by a series of contemptuous men, experiences bizarre episodes in which she feels herself transforming into one of the great cats in her care. And Elisabeth Boyer, a passionate Creole aristocrat trapped on her husband's antebellum plantation, finds deliverance in the form of a black...

In Alexandra, Martin creates a slowly shocking erotic odyssey, a bittersweet love story, a chilling tale of a man destroyed by a desperate and tragic experiment in passion. "A strange and artful novel".--Margaret Manning, Boston Sunday Globe.

Rich with menace, this novel unfolds in a world where darkness intrudes into bright and pleasant places, a world with betrayal at its heart. In shimmering prose Martin raises the question, Who shall inherit America?

From the Orange Prize-winning author of 'Property' comes this story of a woman on the run from sexual obsession.

Are universal rights bound to colonialism? Are they culturally imperialistic? By juxtaposing Morocco's practice of torture with its discourse of cultural relativism, this study links popular resistance to universal rights to a deliberate politics that delegitimizes those very same rights, requiring a new, more inclusive system of universalism.

The twelve stories in this essential collection comprise the best of Valerie Martin s long and distinguished career. Celebrated for her unflinching exploration of human morality and her astonishing insights into our shared losses and joys, Martin draws on an extraordinary range of genres and settings, shifting from realism to myth, from past to present, from the Louisiana bayou to the streets of Rome and beyond.
In these stories, Martin mines her three literary preoccupations animals, artists, and metamorphoses to unforgettable effect. In The Consolation of Nature, a family battles a...

Are universal rights bound to colonialism? Are they culturally imperialistic? By juxtaposing Morocco's practice of torture with its discourse of cultural relativism, this study links popular resistance to universal rights to a deliberate politics that delegitimizes those very same rights, requiring a new, more inclusive system of universalism.