This promo event is through Rock Star Book Tours. A Poisoner’s Tale Blog Tour and giveaway is a two-week event with ten hosts. Check out the schedule at the end for your next stop and leave a comment for the author and tour host. Use the Rafflecopter below to enter the giveaway.
ABOUT THE BOOK
The legendary figure of notorious seventeenth-century Italian poisoner Giulia Tofana, thought to be the first female serial killer in history, is brought to life in this feminist retelling.
Palermo 1632: Giulia is thirteen when she learns her mother greatest secret: Teofania makes an undetectable, slow-acting, lethal poison—Acqua Tofana—which she uses to free the broken and abused women of Palermo. Now Teofania wants to pass her recipe on to her daughter, and Giulia soon realizes that in a time when women have no voice, justice is sometimes best served in a cup of wine or broth.
Rome, 1656: Years later, within the alleys and shadows of the Eternal City, Giulia forms her own circle of female poisoners, who work together under the guise of an apothecary shop to sell poison to women in need.
But even in a time of plague, when death looms over the city, it doesn’t go unnoticed that the men of Rome are starting to fall like flies. And with the newly elected pope determined to rid the city of witches and heretics, Giulia is more vulnerable than ever. How far is she willing to go to continue her mother’s legacy?
Weaving together the stories of the women Giulia helped, the men she killed, and those who wanted her dead, this is a tale of magic, secrets, vengeance, and sin in the back streets of Rome—and, ultimately, a fight for power.
1 winner will receive a finished copy of A POISONER’S TALE, US Only. Ends February 18th, midnight EST.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cathryn Kemp is a Sunday Times bestselling ghost writer and author with a prolific career writing celebrity, inspirational, true crime, and nostalgia titles. Her personal memoir, Coming Clean, won the Big Red Read Prize for Nonfiction. For A Poisoner’s Tale, her first foray into historical fiction, she was awarded a foundation grant by the Society of Authors to pursue the research for this book, reaching into the state archives of Palermo and the Vatican’s secret Holy Office of the Inquisition. She lives on the south coast of England.
Follow Cathryn on her website, Twitter, Instagram, Goodreads, and Amazon.
AUTHOR INTERVIEW
What is a day in your writing life?
My day starts early. I set my alarm for 5:00 a.m. in summer and 5:30 a.m. in winter. I make coffee, make sure the lighting is right in my office space, light a candle, check I have my crystals, shells, a sound bowl, and begin writing. I find ritual—especially the ritual of writing time—incredibly soothing and inspiring. I find there is clarity and so much peace in working early. My best ideas come, my writing flows, there is absolute silence. I work until just before 7:00 a.m. when my son needs to get up and get ready to leave for school.
I am back writing around 8:00 a.m. and I continue until noon, when I stop for food and a reading break. I might meet friends for coffee or get some fresh sea air, as I live on the south coast of England. Once our evening family life is done, I might head back to my desk to work later if deadlines are pressing. If not, I’ll watch an hour of television or read until it’s time to get some sleep. It doesn’t matter how much time I spend reading, my TBR pile never seems to get smaller. I’ll check in on my socials. I generally post early in the morning, and that can sometimes eat up quite a bit of my writing time, but I love connecting with readers and authors so I make sure I post at least three times a week unless there is a lot going on. I answer emails, make plans for the next day, and scroll for a while on Instagram, as it’s my favorite social media platform. I am obsessed with art and interior design. I trained as an artist, gaining both a BA honors degree in fine art and a masters degree in European Fine Art, so I love connecting with writers and artists who are working in interdisciplinary ways, as well as appreciating gorgeous interiors and making notes. I am renovating my glorious wreck of an historic home in St. Leonards-on-Sea, a place that was designed by architect Decimus Burton as a playground for the aristocracy in the late 1800s. I plot out my next renovations and how to pay for them while falling asleep. I have an amazingly privileged life. I get to write every day. I get to spend time with my son and partner, as well as restore my home (slowly) to its former glory. I get to spend time with friends and work with some incredible creatives and publishers. I do not take any of it for granted.
My writing life at the moment is centered around book two, which is being published by Penguin Random House in January 2026. I am still researching as I write, so I am planning my next research trip to Iceland, as well as continuing to read everything I can about Icelandic witchcraft and the Sagas and Norse Gods.
EXCERPT
Rome, July 5, 1659
It ends with the scaffold. Five women: blindfolded, shorn, dressed in sacking, trembling before the gallows. All of us wearing our own noose, now slack, now heavy around our necks.
The Foul Sorceress Giovanna.
The Treacherous Witch Graziosa.
The Most Wicked Temptress Maria.
The Devil’s Whore Girolama.
Then me, the Poisoner of Palermo. The woman who started it all. My ending written by the avvisi, the gallows pamphlets, though I am still alive, still breathing, still waiting. For years, no man in Rome has been safe. For years, I have brewed my potion, dispensing it to the city’s wives and whores. I have kept to the shadows, avoiding the Inquisition and its hawk-like gaze; the guards like talons reaching into the stews and brothels of the back streets. For years, I have kept my daughter safe, my circle of poisoners too. And now, finally, our uneasy luck has run out. Crooked from the work of the strappado we stand like five black crows, flinching. A hush descends over the crowds. I imagine stepping onto the stage, the audience awaiting my first line, the heat from the flames in their sconces making my greasepaint run. I might be Arlecchino, hunched and mute before the words tumble out of me like acrobats.
But this is no play. This is where my story finishes, amid the stench of the baying, unwashed bodies crammed into Campo de’ Fiori to watch our sisterhood die in the full glare of the midday sun. Those men who scribble their salacious glee within the pamphlets do so without mention of my life or my heart. They do not know me. They do not know us. They write my tale without my consent, without my voice.
We stand, silenced. Our voices are not heard above the din of the city, the scratching of the scribes, the peal of the bells. Men who have never met us will tell our tale to those who come after. They will forget that we are flesh-and-blood women who have lived, and who now die, at the mercy of those who judge us. We are women with no future, who grasped at life on our own terms—and will now die for it.
Our secrets lie within these pages, and yet no true words will be written about us, or none by our hand. Time has run out. The crowd sways. The sun bleaches the square. The seconds die away, as the final moment approaches. The drumbeat begins again. The prayers I am instructed to say fall silent on my lips. The rope tightens.
FOLLOW THE BLOG TOUR
Week One:
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2/3/2025 |
IG Post |
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2/4/2025 |
Excerpt/IG Post |
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2/5/2025 |
Excerpt/IG Post |
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2/6/2025 |
IG Review |
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2/7/2025 |
Review/IG Post |
Week Two:
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2/10/2025 |
Review/IG Post |
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2/11/2025 |
IG Review |
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2/12/2025 |
IG Review/LFL Drop Pic |
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2/13/2025 |
Review/IG Post |
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2/14/2025 |
Review/IG Post |
BLOG TOUR ORGANIZED BY:
