From Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award-winning author Jo Walton comes Lent, a magical re-imagining of the man who remade fifteenth-century Florence—in all its astonishing strangeness
Young Girolamo’s life is a series of miracles.
It’s a miracle that he can see demons, plain as day, and that he can cast them out with the force of his will. It’s a miracle that he’s friends with Pico della Mirandola, the Count of Concordia. It’s a miracle that when Girolamo visits the deathbed of Lorenzo “the Magnificent,” the dying Medici is wreathed in celestial light, a surprise to everyone, Lorenzo included. It’s a miracle that when Charles VIII of France invades northern Italy, Girolamo meets him in the field, and convinces him to not only spare Florence but also protect it. It’s a miracle than whenever Girolamo preaches, crowds swoon. It’s a miracle that, despite the Pope’s determination to bring young Girolamo to heel, he’s still on the loose…and, now, running Florence in all but name.
That’s only the beginning. Because Girolamo Savanarola is not who—or what—he thinks he is. He will discover the truth about himself at the most startling possible time. And this will be only the beginning of his many lives.
"Rendered with Walton's usual power and beauty...It's this haunting character complexity that ultimately holds the reader captive to the tale." —N. K. Jemisin, New York Times, on My Real Children

Jo Walton has published thirteen novels, most recently Necessity. She has also published three poetry collections and an essay collection. She won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2002, the World Fantasy Award for Tooth and Claw in 2004, the Hugo and Nebula awards for Among Others in 2012,  and in 2014 both the Tiptree Award for My Real Children and the Locus Non Fiction award for What Makes This Book So Great. She comes from Wales but lives in Montreal where the food and books are much better. She gets bored easily so she tends to write books that are different from each other. She also reads a lot, enjoys travel, talking about books, and eating great food. She plans to live to be ninety-nine and write a book every year.

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"Brilliant, compelling, and frankly unputdownable." —NPR on The Just City
"Rendered with Walton's usual power and beauty...It's this haunting character complexity that ultimately holds the reader captive to the tale." —N. K. Jemisin, New York Times, on My Real Children
"Has as much in common with an Alice Munro story as it does with, say, Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle." —Lev Grossman, Publishers Weekly, on My Real Children
"Walton shines, as she always does, in the small and hurtful and glorious business of interpersonal relationships...this book about philosophy, history, gender and freedom also manages to be a spectacular coming-of-age tale that encompasses everything from courtroom dramas to sexual intrigue." —Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing on The Just City
"A remarkable novel of ideas...Superb. In the end, the novel does more than justice to the idea of the Just City." —Booklist, starred review, on The Just City