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For Cabaret, Lily's latest novel click here. A comic mystery set in the back streets of Rome, about a young woman who is overjoyed when her husband disappears Ardor, a wildly imaginative fairy tale for adults A hilarious and naughty celebration of the senses and the strange places they can lead us, Nectar explores the mystery of sexual attraction and the frivolous nature of divine justice La Cucina, simmering in the heat of a Sicilian kitchen, a saucy tale of sex, recipes, and murder.

Prologue

Ardor - Prelude

It hung in the air over the region that summer, like a cloud, rendering the air thick and pearly.  Suspended spangles of gold dust caught the sun and twinkled, causing a pang of longing. Cloying and rose-colored.  A perfumed ectoplasm. 

‘Gardenias’, ‘freesias’, ‘sweet peas’, ‘apple blossom’, said the garden lovers, their noses straining to put a label on it. 

‘Fresh cream’, ‘molten chocolate’, ‘baking bread’, ‘ripe melons’, ‘wild strawberries’, said the gourmands, their mouths watering. 

 ‘Lust’, said the moralists applying pegs to their noses. 

 ‘A saintly emanation’, said the sisters of the monastery of Sant’Antonio Abate, giving praise in a special mass officiated over by the bishop. 

 ‘Drains’, wrote the municipal inspector of environmental health with a flourish on his clipboard. 

 ‘Fog’, said the meteorologists. 

 ‘Fresh air’, said the purists. 

 ‘Death’, said the pessimists. 

 ‘Hogwash’, said the intellectuals. 

 ‘Cholera’, said the medics. 

 Yet it was none of those things.  It was ardour, and those that inhaled it, myself included, were stricken.

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© Lily Prior 2007