So rich, so detailed, so colorful, The Lost Diary of Don Juan is a magic carpet of a book,a picaresque adventure that takes you to a time and place blazing with excitement and discovery. Doug Abrams writes with such polish, immediacy, and authority, you pause to admire his mastery of narrative. The book, like its hero, is a seducer.

It was a time of discovery and decadence, when life became a gamble and the gold that poured endlessly into the port of Sevilla devalued money, marriage, and love itself. In the midst of these treacherous times, Juan Tenorio is born and then abandoned in the barn of a convent. Raised secretly by the nuns, he learns to love and worship all women and wants nothing more than to be a priest, until he falls in love with one of the sisters. When their affair is discovered, Juan leaves the Church forever. He is soon recruited to be a spy by the powerful Marquis de la Mota, who teaches him to become the world's greatest libertine and seducer of women. But when he crosses swords with the most powerful man in the Empire, Don Juan must escape the murderous fury of the Inquisitor, who battles all forms of debauchery,deviance, and heresy.

It is after knowing countless women that he is convinced by the Marquis to keep a diary,and it is here within its pages that Don Juan reveals his greatest adventures and the Arts of Passion he mastered. But what finally compels him to confess everything and risk losing his life, livelihood, and honor is the most perilous adventure of all--the irresistible fall into the madness of love with the only woman who could ever make him forget all others.

Editor's Note vii

Rumors and Lies

A Flicker of Passion

The Desire of a Woman

No One Will Ever Know

Not Every Man with a Mask Is a Burglar

The Love of His Angels

AVision of God

This I Cannot Do at Any Price

Like Salt into the Land

A Man Is Not Just What He Is Born

The Education of a Libertine

Gold in the Veins of Sevilla

The Slave Market

Taberna del Pirata

Secrets Never Stay Buried

A Thousand Nights with a Stranger

Corpus Christi

The Bullfight

Sins of the Flesh

The Deadliest Sin

Alma's Intuition

The Masquerade Party

Duchess Cristina's Invitation

The Truth

Knowledge That Gould Lead to Our Ruin

Alma's Return

A New World

A Moth to a Flame

A Tour of Heaven

A Child of Deception and Cruelty

The Wager of Love

The Secret of Marriage

Safe Passage

Alma's Temptation

In the Name of the Holy Inquisition

Confession at the Alcfizar

Dueling on the Rooftops of Sevilla

DofiaAna's Bedchamber

A Farewell

The Last Night: A Final Entry

Glossary and Notes

Acknowledgments

Author's Note