The internationally bestselling author of The Wedding Officer delivers a stunning blend of exotic adventure and erotic passion that seduces from the very first page—and intoxicates until the last . . . a novel whose mystery begins with a single coffee bean. A cup of coffee changed Robert Wallis’s life—and a cup of very bad coffee at that. The impoverished poet is offered the last thing a struggling young artiste in fin de siècle England could possibly want: a job. But the job Wallis accepts—employing his palate and talent for words to compose a “vocabulary of coffee” based on its many elusive flavors—is the beginning of an extraordinary adventure. It’s an adventure that will lead Wallis across the continent and into the arms of two breathtaking women: Emily, the spirited daughter of his employer, and Fikre, the defiant, seductive slave of a powerful coffee merchant, who, in one unforgettable gesture, invites Wallis to partake of both the mysteries of coffee and a forbidden passion—a passion that will change the way he thinks about life, about fate, and especially about love. . . .