From the moment it opens - on a rockypatch of Italian coastline, circa 1962, when a daydreaming young innerkeeper looks out over the water and spies a mysterious woman approaching him on a boat - Jess Walter's Beautiful Ruins is a dazzling, yet deeply human, roller coaster of a novel. From the lavish set of Cleopatra to the shabby revelry of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, to the back lots of contemporary Hollywood, Beautiful ruins is gloriously inventive and constantly surprising - a story of flawed yet fascinating people navigating the rocky shores of their lives while clinging to their improbable dreams.