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