The Mysterious Life of Maria Maruby

The Mysterious Life of Maria Maruby: The Rose That Pricks to Bleed Book 1 · by Gema Isabelle (writing as Agent Alhaja)

She has been running for a long time. From herself. From her past. From the life she lost — and the one that keeps finding her anyway.

The Mysterious Life of Maria Maruby opens in Venice: a girl in a black tracksuit, blood-stained bandages on her wrists and ankles, leaping across the paved streets with an unknown figure closing in behind her. She buys herself a few stolen minutes on a ferry, watches the seagulls, and asks herself a question she can't answer yet: How did it ever come to this?

What follows is a dark, globe-trotting mystery — from the canals of Venice to the streets of Rome — filled with spy intrigue, dangerous letters, a cast of unforgettable characters, and one young woman at the center of it all who is equal parts fugitive and force of nature. Maria Maruby is star-crossed, sharp-tongued, and utterly impossible to look away from.

This is Book 1 of The Mysterious Life of Maria Maruby series — six years in the making, begun when its author was ten years old.

What's inside: 14 chapters + Prologue + Epilogue · 286 pages · Large Print Edition

About the author: Gema Isabelle is a 17-year-old Puerto Rican author, singer-songwriter, and homeschooler from Caguas, Puerto Rico. Inspired by spy films, European architecture, and a lifelong fascination with mystery, she has been building Maria Maruby's world since she was a child. The Mysterious Life of Maria Maruby is her second published book.

"Maria Maruby has been playing within my mind for 6 years. I present her to you all now…"