The House by the Sea

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<b>Now in paperback: spanning four decades and traveling from the Tuscan countryside to the Devonshire coast, Santa Montefiore’s <i>The Mermaid Garden</i> is “a sumptuous tale of love, loss, and redemption” (<i>Publishers Weekly</i>).</b>Ten-year-old Floriana is captivated by the beauty of the magnificent Tuscan villa that overlooks the sea just outside her small village. She likes to imagine that one day she’ll escape her meager existence and live there surrounded by its otherworldly splendor. Then one day, Dante, the son of the villa’s powerful industrialist owner, invites her inside and shows her the enchanting Mermaid Garden. From that moment, Floriana knows that the only destiny for her is there, in that garden, with Dante. But as they grow up and fall in love, their romance causes a crisis, jeopardizing the very thing they hold most dear.<p>Decades later and hundreds of miles away, a beautiful old country house hotel on England’s Devon coast has fallen on hard times after the financial crash of 2008. Its owner, Marina, advertises for an artist to stay the summer and teach the guests how to paint. The man she hires is charismatic and wise and soon begins to pacify the discord in her family and transform the fortunes of the hotel. But he has his own agenda. Is it to destroy, to seduce, or to heal? Whatever his intentions, he is certain to change Marina’s life forever.</p>