Counting the stars - Helen Dunmore

In the heat of Rome's long summer, the poet Catullus and his older married lover, Clodia Metelli, meet in secret.

Living at the heart of sophisticated, brittle and brutal Roman society at the time of Pompey, Crassus and Julius Caesar, Catullus is obsessed with Clodia, the Lesbia of his most passionate poems. He is jealous of her husband, of her maid, even of her pet sparrow. And Clodia? Catullus is 'her dear poet', but possibly not her only interest.

Their Rome is a city of extremes. Tenants are packed into ramshackle apartment blocks while palatial villas house the magnificence of the families who control Rome. Armed street gangs clash in struggles for political power. Slaves are the eyes and ears of everything that goes on, while civilization and violence are equals, murder is the easy option and poison the weapon of choice.

Catallus' relationship with Clodia is one of the most intense, passionate, tormented and candid in history. In love and in hate, their story exposes the beauty and terrors of Roman life in the late Republic.