Plüschow and the Mollizzi by Steve Berman
Naples, 1896. Guglielmo Plüschow is a photographer of some reputation and considerable appetite, content among the sun-bronzed boys of Mergellina and the darkrooms of Via de' Mille. Then a desperate Englishman arrives with an impossible companion, a century-old doll that speaks, and a proposition he cannot refuse.
Adrian Singleton needs a relic. A blood-stained handkerchief locked away in the rooms of a recently dead saint in Turin, said to cure his opium addiction and do something stranger still for his wooden friend. The man who arranged it is Frederick Rolfe, a fraud, fabulist, and thief.
What follows is a journey north through the dining cars and pension parlors of Belle Époque Italy and into a Basilica haunted by boys who died badly in the shadow of a saint. A story of appetite and obsession from Lambda Literary Award-winner Steve Berman.
