After a brief illness and premature death, an Italian man returns home to find his deceitful wife in the arms of his former best friend. This shocking reveal pushes him to seek retribution from the unsuspecting parties. In cholera-ridden Italy, Count Fabio Romani lives in an illustrious home with his beautiful wife. Yet, his life takes an unsuspected turn when he suddenly falls ill and is presumed dead. He is buried alive but manages to escape and find a way back to the woman he loves. Unfortunately, his return is soured when he discovers his closest friend has taken his place. Heartbroken, Fabio conceals his identity and devises a plan to avenge everything he has lost. Vendetta: A Story of One Forgotten is the second novel published by Marie Corelli following her debut, A Romance of Two Worlds. It’s an epic drama fueled by one man’s desperate need to retaliate. Fabio is a tortured hero who ultimately plays judge, jury and executioner. With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Vendetta: A Story of One Forgotten is both modern and readable.

"[...]half provokingly, half sweetly! I gazed and gazed again, dazzled and excited, beauty makes such fools of us all! This was a woman-one of the sex I mistrusted and avoided-a woman in the earliest spring of her youth, a girl of fifteen or sixteen at the utmost. Her veil had been thrown back by accident or design, and for one brief moment I drank in that soul-tempting glance, that witch-like smile! The procession passed-the vision faded-but in that breath of time one epoch of my life had closed forever, and another had begun! Of course I married her. We Neapolitans lose no time in such matters. We are not prudent. Unlike the calm blood of Englishmen, ours rushes swiftly through our veins-it is warm as wine and sunlight, and needs no fictitious stimulant. We love, we desire, we possess; and then? We tire, you say? These southern races are so fickle! All wrong-we are less tired than you deem. And do not Englishmen tire? Have they no secret ennui at times when sitting in the chimney nook of "home, sweet home," with their fat wives and ever-spreading families? Truly, yes! But they are too cautious to say so. I need not relate the story of my courtship-it was brief and sweet as a song sung perfectly. There were no obstacles. The girl I sought was the only daughter of a ruined Florentine noble of dissolute character, who gained a bare subsistence by frequenting the[...]".

Imagine friends and family believed you were dead from the Cholera- Imagine being buried alive and awakening in your coffin - Now, imagine a frantic escape from the rotting crypt only to discover something worse waiting in store.... Thus begins Marie Corelli's suspense-thriller, Vendetta. Awakening to find he has been prematurely buried, Fabio narrowly escapes from his decrepit family mausoleum in order to seek revenge upon those who have wronged him. Disfigured from the Cholera, Fabio assumes a new identity and name, and re-introduces himself to his family who are unaware of his true character. The plan he sets in motion is gruesomely terrifying - and deliciously perverse. More than a novel of revenge, Vendetta is a finely tuned character study of madness, obsession, decadence, and a celebration of Gothic settings unrivaled by even Edgar Allan Poe. Impossible to put down, it is easy to see why Marie Corelli was called the Queen of Victorian best-sellers, for Vendetta remains as spellbinding today as it was over a century ago.