Alexander moved over to his favourite chair in the corner of the large chamber. 'Sit, my children, sit with me,' he gently ordered them...'We are a family,' he told his children. 'And the loyalty of the family must come before everything and everyone else. We must learn from each other, protect each other, and be bound first and foremost to each other. For if we honour that commitment, we will never be vanquished - but if we falter in that loyalty, we will all be condemned...' What is a family? Mario Puzo first answered that question, unforgettably, in his landmark bestseller "The Godfather"; with the creation of the Corleones, he forever redefined the concept of blood loyalty. Now, thirty years later, Puzo enriches us all with his ultimate vision of the subject, in a masterpiece that crowns his remarkable career: the story of the greatest crime family in Italian history - the Borgias. In "The Family", this singular novelist transports his readers back to fifteenth-century Rome and reveals the extravagance and intrigue of the Vatican as surely as he once revealed the secrets of the Mafia.

Their intermingled stories constitute a symphony of human emotion and behaviour, from pride to romance to jealousy to betrayal and murderous rage. And their time, place, and characters are recaptured in all their earthy, human grandeur, with the unerring insight and compassion that were Mario Puzo's great gifts.