CAROLINA INVERNIZIO was born in Voghera (Pavia) in 1851. She spent much of her adult life in or near Florence and Turin working with both book and newspaper publishers. She died in 1916.Despite the dismissive judgments of the period's literary establishment, she was an immensely successful and popular novelist of serialized fiction. She dealt with themes of criminality and investigation, introducing powerful female characters, both good and evil. In 1932, she was heralded posthumously as "the woman who anticipated by half a century gialla and supergialla fiction."Invernizio wrote close to 150 novels and 20 collections of novellas, but she has never been published previously by an English-language publisher.