About

Mr B's Emporium is thrilled to welcome critically acclaimed author, Elizabeth Fremantle, to Mr B's to discuss her new novel, Sinners.

Set in 16th century Rome, Sinners is based on the electrifying true story of Beatrice Cenci, a young noblewoman condemned to death for murdering her father, which caused a public outcry of sympathy to sweep across Europe. Still a figurehead of feminism even today, she inspired Percy Bysshe Shelley's The Cenci, and the Portrait of Beatrice Cenci which still hangs in the National Gallery of Ancient Art in Rome.

Elizabeth Fremantle is the critically acclaimed author of Firebrand (formerly Queen's Gambit), which has since been adapted into a film starring Alicia Vikander and Jude Law. Her most recent novel, Disobedient, a feminist retelling of the life of seventeenth-century Italian painter Artemisia Gentileschi, was our Lottie's favourite book of the year in 2023 and has since gone on to sell hundreds of copies in our shop.

About the book:

A young noblewoman accused of murder, awaits execution. Imprisoned in the Corte Savella, she has captured the hearts and sympathy of all Rome…

This is the true and tragic tale of Beatrice Cenci. Murder most foul or vengeance most just? Helpless victim or resolute heroine? Rome, 1599.

Beatrice yearns to escape the clutches of her abusive father and determined to find a way back to Rome, enlists the help of Olimpio, the castle's keeper. Soon the love that grows between them will transform Beatrice's fortunes, for better and for worse…

History has sold her short. She is no doe-eyed victim of her father's brutality, nor the cunning murderer who plotted her father's demise.

No, this Beatrice – a woman pregnant by her lover, incarcerated in a remote castle by her father, and brim-full of white-hot rage – is both innocent and guilty, saint and sinner. And she will stand tall in the face of the violence of men, no matter the cost.

I was spellbound by this wonderful book and had to neglect everything else to finish it. Truly, it's one of the best historical novels I have read in a long time. ― Alison Weir

A sensationally powerful novel with a rollercoaster of a story that has the dark logic of Greek tragedy. ― Andrew Taylor