Losing Venice

Short-listed for the 2019 People's Book Prize
"A remarkable novel... only someone who has lived in Venice could write with such vivid detail, clarity and affection about her charms and annoyances."
JoAnn Loctov, Dream of Venice
Surrounded by beauty, can you learn to live beautifully?
Travel marketing specialist Mark Vandermar leads an itinerant life. Elsewhere is where he calls home, so it's no surprise when he's called to Venice to craft the Venice Tourism Council's new campaign to attract suddenly skittish American tourism.

Falling in love with the colorful campos and canals of Venice comes naturally but how far will he go to chase the love of the right woman?

Mark's new life abroad unfolds against the rich history of Venice, Prague, and the Greek islands, where he encounters a cast of compelling characters that lead to life-changing consequences. The geography of his new life is marked with discovery and reinvention, but what he really seeks is to learn to live beautifully, to find a place and a person to call home. 

"Like the finest expatriate novels, Losing Venice is as richly textured as its fabled locales and dives deeply into the possibilities, perils, and pleasures of learning how not to be lost."

"Touching, involving -- and very funny... a highly engaging novel ..." 
Gregory Dowling, Ascension and The Four Horsemen

"If you've ever wondered why people still write novels, reading Stavrou's, Losing Venice, might answer your question. This funny, poignant account of failure that turns to success...captures a moment and place that, though in the recent past, seems as distant as Hemingway's Paris and as important. A reminder of what the business of literature, of living is. All lovers of the art of writing and romance should read it." 
George Crane, best-selling author of Bones of the Master and Beyond the House of the False Lama

"This remarkable, beautifully written novel is packed with excitement and absurdity, longing and love, but its triumph is its narrative... therein lies its magic. Losing Venice is a wonderful book. A damned wonderful book."  
Larry Francis, An Anthropology of Anonymity and Derrida's Toast

"...a funny, sweet, and amazingly well-written novel... An interesting, lively, funny read that will tug at the travel bug in all of its readers."
Sandra Ann Heath, Unrest: A Novel

"...a romp around Venice, but it is much more than that. The observations of place (mainly Venice but also Prague and Hydra ) are on point and perceptive... this novel is a little gem... well written and thoroughly enjoyable..." 
Trip Fiction