The Lady Paramount

A young American woman arrives in Venice with one intention: to disappear. Miss Danby has fled the gilded cage of her New York family, the endless rounds of suitable suitors and social obligations that threatened to suffocate her. In the watery streets and moonlit piazzas of Venice, she finds something she never expected - herself. Harland paints the city not as a tourist backdrop but as a place of transformation, where ancient boundaries dissolve and a woman might remake her own story. Among the artists and expatriates, the mysterious Englishmen and devious Italian counts, Miss Danby navigates a world of intrigue that mirrors her own internal struggle: between safety and freedom, between the life she's escaping and the one she's desperate to create. This is a novel about the daring act of choosing yourself, rendered in Harland's stylish, precise prose.