AN Irreverent Curiosity - In Search of the Church's Strangest Relic in Italy's OddestTown

Four days later, with no arrests and a city on edge, an anonymous e-mail arrives in Aidan’s inbox. Attached is the photograph of an attractive young white woman, along with a chilling message: “This is Paige Roderick. She’s the one responsible.”

A biography and family memoir by turns hilarious and heart-wrenching, Miranda Seymour's Thrumpton Hall is a riveting, frequently shocking, and ultimately unforgettable true story of the devastating consequences of obsessive desire and misplaced love.

"Dear Thrumpton, how I miss you tonight." When twenty-one-year-old George Seymour wrote these words in 1944, the object of his affection was not a young woman but the beautiful country house in Nottinghamshire that he desired above all else. Miranda Seymour would later be raised at Thrumpton Hall—her upbringing far from idyllic, as life revolved around her father's odd capriciousness. The house took priority over everything, even his family—until the day when George Seymour, in his golden years, began dressing in black leather and riding powerful motorbikes around the countryside in the company of surprising friends.

For fans of Downton Abbey—the show’s creator, Julian Fellowes, called it “brilliant, original, and intensely readable”—Thrumpton Hall is a poignant and memorable true story of family.

One summer day in 1897, a young singer, Enrico Caruso, arrives at the home of the Giachetti family. He has come to Livorno to sing on the summer stage with Ada Giachetti, a famous and beautiful soprano. Ada's mother offers him a spare room, and before Ada herself has a chance to meet the unknown tenor, her younger sister, Rina, arrives home from the market and falls fatefully in love.

With the help of singing lessons from Ada, Caruso wins the leading role in Puccini's new opera La Bohème. Although Caruso loves Rina, it is Ada he adores, and they soon become lovers. Heartbroken, Rina becomes an opera singer too, hoping to take her sister's place. For decades, the two sisters are locked in a struggle to be the star on Caruso's stage and in his bed, while Caruso's voice grows more and more unimaginably beautiful.