Read an extract from The Immaculate Deception by Isabela Livino
Raised in a deeply religious household, Madalena knows Dante’s Inferno by heart and fears her mother’s reaction as much as she fears God. When she falls pregnant with a child conceived in sin, her mother issues a threat: marry or surrender the baby.
Confident that the father, the dashing Leandro Neves, will propose, Madalena sets off to his sprawling estate. After a storm wrecks her carriage, she awakens in Leandro’s crumbling mansion, tended to by the magnetic Doctor Lobo. Leandro is there… but he is no longer the charming poet she knew. He’s silent. Obsessed. Always watching.
Strange perfume haunts a locked room. Pages vanish from books. Jewels lie untouched in a forgotten wardrobe. And mirrors begin disappearing after Madalena sees something – or someone – ghastly in the reflection.
Leandro is unravelling. Doctor Lobo may be hiding something even darker. Trapped in a decaying house of secrets, Madalena must uncover the truth before the men around her destroy her, and before the hell she fears becomes the one she’s living in…
READ AN EXTRACT FROM THE IMMACULATE DECEPTION
Chapter 1
Pernambuco, Brazil
June 1877
Some people have the Bible memorized; I have Dante’s Inferno memorized. I know all about the grief-wracked city of sand-swept spires of wind—Hell—and I know every punishment for every conceivable sin as laid down in its nine circles. I know about divine justice, and how the punishment always mirrors the sin. Sometimes, if I am distressed, I hear the sounds of Hell in my head, as described in the third canto: sighing, sobbing, moaning, plaintive wailing, discordant tongues, tormented words, the twang of rage, strident voices, and the sound of smacking hands, all in a cacophonous symphony. But if I cover my ears, shut my eyes, and count to ten, it goes away.
“You shouldn’t want it to go away,” Mother told me once. “If you truly hear the sounds of Hell in your head, then all the more should you fear God.”
Heat climbs up my spine and I fan myself with the sheet of hymns. Father Mateus reads from a thick gilt-edged Bible in a lethargic tone, as though he, too, is drained by the heat. The cream chasuble draped over his shoulders must be suffocating. But perhaps, being a holy man, he is above such things as physical discomfort. Don’t holy people lie on beds of nails and walk on hot coals and such?
My chiffon dress clings to my damp back, the skirt’s lace tickles my knees, and a faint nausea has soured my stomach all morning. I regret forcing myself to eat the manioc porridge this morning. On the other hand, skipping breakfast altogether would have aroused suspicion. How many times can I blame the porridge for my condition?
The woman in front of me shifts so she is blocking my view of Father Mateus, and I find myself staring at the back of her head, the dark creases in her veil that sort of look like a demon’s howling face. In the eighth circle of Hell, soothsayers and false prophets walk with their necks twisted, so their faces look back. That is their divine punishment: In life, they made false prophecies about the future. In death, they see only what has already passed, doomed to look forever backward. But that won’t be my fate. My sin would place me in the second circle of Hell, where light is mute. Where tormented souls spin in an endless whirlwind of vicious force without rest. In life they allowed themselves to be swept away by lust and committed carnal sin. In death they clash and roll and spin in the unyielding violence of a chafing wind.
But at least Leandro would be there with me.
The Immaculate Deception is published by Gollancz on 3 September 2026
