Montepulciano 1452

Montepulciano, 1447.

Adriano Malverni is wealthy, connected and increasingly necessary to a town caught between war, debt, failing roads, grain shortages and political fear.

He has no throne.

He does not need one.

As merchants wait for payment, officials search for solutions and ordinary families absorb the cost of public decisions, Malverni learns how easily usefulness can become dependence-and how dependence can become authority.

But Montepulciano is not held together by one man.

It is held together by thousands of smaller choices.

Luca Valceri learns that truth can survive on paper and still be lost. Benedetto Savenni discovers that laws matter most when fear makes them inconvenient. Sandro Ardelmi sees that every decision made in the language of power is eventually paid for by someone real. Niccolò Colveri learns that an action meant to protect one person can alter the lives of a hundred others.

And Malverni learns the lesson he never believed applied to him:

No matter how much power you have, the decision to keep it is not yours.

Set in fifteenth-century Tuscany, MONTEPULCIANO 1452 is a historical novel about money, law, credit, political ambition and the people whose seemingly insignificant decisions can change the fate of a city.

There Are No Small Enemies.