The Dream Thief

Someone is murdering young, beautiful women in mid-sixteenth century Venice. Even the most formidable walls of the grandest villas cannot keep him out, for he steals into his victims’ dreams. Holding his chosen prey captive in the night, he seduces them to death. Now Pina’s cousin, Valeria, is found dead, her lovely body ravished. It is the final straw for Pina’s overbearing fiance’, Antonio, and he orders her confined within the walls of her mother’s opulent villa on Venice’s Grand Canal. It is a blow not only to Pina, but to the poor and downtrodden in the city’s ghettos, to whom Pina has been an angel of charity and mercy. But Pina does not chafe long in her lavish prison, for soon she too begins to show symptoms of the midnight visitations; a waxen pallor and overwhelming lethargy. Fearing for her daughter’s life, Pina’s mother removes her from the city to their estate in the country. Still, Pina is not safe. For Antonio’s wealth and his family’s power enable him to hide a deadly secret. And the murderer manages to find his intended victim. Not to steal into her dreams and steal away her life, however, but to save her. And to find his own salvation in the arms of the only woman who has ever shown him love.