Stravaganza: City Of Mask by Mary Hoffman - International Book Covers. Across from top: UK x2, Indonesian, Portuguese x2, Russian, Slovenian and Thai. You can also click the images to see which country they’re from.
Lucien is seriously ill but his life is transformed when an old Italian notebook gives him the power to become a stravagante, a time traveller with access to 16th century Italy. He wakes up in Bellezza (Venice) during carnival time and meets Arianna, a girl his own age who is disguised as a boy in the hope of being selected as one of the Duchessa’s mandoliers. Arianna gives Lucien her boy’s clothing and he is selected as a mandolier himself, becoming a friend of fellow-stravagante Rodolfo, the Duchessa’s lover, and saving the Duchessa’s life when she is threatened by an assassin hired by the powerful di Chimici family. For state occasions the Duchessa uses her maid Giuliana as a body-double but Guiliana commits the fatal mistake of revealing the secret to her fiance Enrico and a sequence of devastating consequences unravels. Meanwhile Lucien has met the original stravagante, the Elizabethan alchemist William Dethridge, and he begins to understand that he may be called to follow in his footsteps.
Best Cover: Thai. It’s an incredible cover and one that I wish I had on my shelves (unfortunately I don’t read Thai). I quite like how the masked person resembles a moon.
Worst Cover: I find the first Portuguese cover incredibly creepy but perhaps I’ve been watching too much Doctor Who?
Best Cover / Worst Cover?
