Daughter of Ashes

In the stunning conclusion to Ilaria Tuti’s gripping series set in the mountains of Northern Italy, aging detective Teresa Battaglia battles through escalating dementia to solve a crime that has haunted her for decades.

Superintendent Teresa Battaglia, a trailblazing criminal detective on the Italian police force, is on sick leave, recovering from her recent brush with death in pursuit of a killer. But none of her colleagues—not even her partner, Inspector Marini—know that her Alzheimer’s is getting worse, and that Teresa is unsure she will ever return to work.

Teresa’s plans for retirement are shelved, however, when she is urgently summoned to meet with serial killer Giacomo Mainardi. Refusing to speak with anyone but Teresa, whose investigative work twenty-seven years prior landed him in maximum security prison, Mainardi has disconcerting news: somebody is after him, and only Teresa holds the key to keeping everyone, including herself, safe. To solve the case, Teresa must come face to face with a past she thought she’d buried, back to when Giacomo first began to kill, and Teresa—newly pregnant and married to an abusive man—did everything she could to catch him.

Ilaria Tuti lives in Gemona del Friuli, in the province of Udine. She has a degree in economics, has always had a passion for painting, and freelances for a small independent publisher in her spare time. She won the 2014 Gran Giallo Città di Cattolica literary prize for her short story "The Pagan Child." Flowers over the Inferno was her debut novel.

Ekin Oklap was born in Turkey, and grew up in Italy. She translates from Turkish and Italian. She currently lives in London, where she works as a literary agent. As a translator, she was shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker International Prize.