Cassandra Reilly, the globetrotting translator first introduced in award-winning Gaudi Afternoon, is on the road again, this time to China by way of Budapest, where she plans to catch the Trans-Mongolian Express. But a series of chance encounters on the train leads Cassandra, accompanied by her irrepressible friend Jacqueline Opal and the beautiful Hungarian Eva Kalvin, to the mythic Carpathian mountains of Transylvania.There, at a crumbling health spa directed by sinister Dr. Pustulescu, Cassandra soon finds herself entangled with a host of intriguing characters: the Snapps, an American family with a mysteriously withdrawn four-year-old Romanian daughter; Gladys Bentwhistle, who is hoping Pustulescu's wonder drug, Ionvital, can help her beat old age; and Nadia Pop, the enigmatic director of the Romanian tourist agency.When murder strikes, Cassandra investigates with humor and aplomb, tackling mud baths, ethnic rivalries, vampires, the Romanian police, and the religion of the Great Goddess in her search for truth, love and eternal life. Read Less