The dashing young knight Fernando and his friend, Alberto di Vincenti, are anxious to marry their true loves, Rosara and Viola. But the haughty Duca di Urbino and his bloodthirsty companion Sanguinario have other plans. Will the youthful lovers survive the wiles of the perfidious Urbino and the vengeance of Sanguinario? And can they unravel the secrets contained in the dank subterranean vaults of the duca's Castello di Lepanto, where years earlier a beautiful woman may have met a terrible fate?
Featuring all the classic elements of the late-eighteenth century Gothic novel - sinister villains, murderous banditti, crumbling manuscripts, blood-stained daggers, mysterious parentages, and the dungeons of the Inquisition - "The Vaults of Lepanto" (1814) is one of the scarcest Gothic novels issued by the Minerva Press, surviving in only one known copy, at the library of Castle Corvey in Germany. This first-ever republication includes the unabridged text of the original three volume edition and a new foreword revealing the few facts known about the book's elusive author, T.R. Tuckett."