The Orphan's Song

One

Violetta!"

She spun from her bedroom window, from the seagull roosting on the terra-cotta rooftop next door. She'd been willing its wings to take flight and abandon this shadowy alley. If Violetta were a bird, she would be gliding over the ocean. She would never land on the same ship twice.

Outside, the September morning was so bright, and her sliver of sky so blue, that when she turned from the window it took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the heaving form in her doorway.

"What is it, Laura?" she asked, making room on the bed for her friend. Both girls were sixteen. They had been neighbors, sharing a wall between their single bedrooms on the second floor since they graduated from the nursery at ten. "Come, catch your breath. Take a lesson from a lazy seagull."

But it wasn't Laura's nature to catch her breath. She could worry over anything, from rain dampening a feast day to what happened to sparrow eggs when a mother bird swallowed a pebble of glass. She worried over the moisture from her palms when she played a difficult piece on the violin, drying the wood fastidiously with linen so it wouldn't warp. She worried over how to distinguish her playing from the other violinists in the music school. She worried deeply over being promoted to the coro, and she worried that Violetta didn't worry enough about being promoted with her. She never missed an opportunity to remind Violetta that the coro had space for only thirty-three women at a time, less than half the number presently training in the music school. There were only a few openings each year, as the older girls married or retired to nunneries.

Laura worried over Violetta's voice exercises and the sheet music for Violetta's librettos-too often left scattered on the floor. Over the years, Laura had gotten better at making up excuses for the prioress when Violetta was late for a lesson, but she never stopped worrying that Violetta would be caned. Their relationship was a duet: the more Laura

Lauren Kate is the #1 New York Times and internationally bestselling author of nine novels for young adults, including Fallen, which was made into a major motion picture by Sony. Her books have been translated into more than thirty languages and have sold more than ten million copies worldwide. She lives in Los Angeles with her family. The Orphan's Song is her debut adult novel.

"The Orphan's Song plunges the reader into the streets and canals of eighteenth-century Venice, where the world of Carnivale roils with music, love, and intrigue. Lauren Kate is a masterful storyteller, with a stunning command of her rich historical material and the ability to draw forth the beautiful and intimate songs of the human heart."
Allison Pataki, author of Sisi

"Lauren Kate mesmerizes in a tale that brilliantly recreates 1700s Venice a city of high-stakes intrigue and earthly delights where a pair of abandoned children find solace in music and each other. I was swept along as their lives formed a tangled knot of betrayal and love, lies and redemption. Marvelous."
Fiona Davis, bestselling author of The Masterpiece

"In a gorgeous ode to eighteenth-century Venice, Lauren Kate uncovers the intriguing, little-known origin of the era's most famous Baroque musicians in The Orphan s Song, in a tale brimming with love, deception, and ultimately, surprising truth."
Marie Benedict,  bestselling author of The Other Einstein, Carnegie s Maid, and The Only Woman in the Room

Delightful . . . Kate s enchanting story brings the canals and backchannels of Venice to vivid life and will appeal to fans of Elizabeth Chadwick.
Publishers Weekly

An operatic and opulently detailed tale of longing, secrets, and high-stakes quests for freedom, love, art, and home Kate vividly conjures a city of beauty and pain, piety and criminality, helplessness and ruthlessness, while choreographing a suspenseful, soaring love story of anguish, ecstasy, risk, and stunning reversals.
Booklist

Kate brings the romance of 18th-century Venice to life in this light historical...it's an engaging read with likable characters and an emotionally potent plot.
Library Journal