Amazon.com Book Description (ISBN 0452284341, Paperback)

When Ugo DiFonte and his teenaged daughter Miranda are snatched from their farm and spirited away to Duke Federico Basillione DiVincelli's estate, Ugo thinks life can't get any worse...until he is forced to replace the recently de-tongued royal food taster. Now Ugo must stay alive-a difficult prospect considering the prince's myriad of enemies and their poisons-to protect Miranda from her suitors and desires, and somehow hold the unruly court together.

A bestseller in ten countries, in this novel of gastronomical delight and brilliant wit Peter Elbling remarkably captures the sights, sounds, and tastes of sixteenth-century Italy with the story of a peasant rising to extraordinary and death-defying acts of grace.