Book excerpt: "Tartufo" by Kira Jane Buxton

We may receive an affiliate commission from anything you buy from this article.In her novel "Tartufo" (Grand Central Publishing), Kira Jane Buxton (the author of "Hollow Kingdom" and "Feral Creatures") captures the comedy of truffle-mania in a tiny Tuscan village, upon the discovery of the world's largest truffle.Read an excerpt below. "Tartufo" by Kira Jane Buxton $27 at Amazon Prefer to listen? Audible has a 30-day free trial available right now.

Try Audible for free The wisest souls say that pure mountain air makes us all go a little mad.A wind—lawless and long-tailed—slices through the snow-stippled Apuan alps and the Apennines with all the wantonness of La Befana, the winter witch.

Swifts catch this wind on their wings, carving up the crisp blue morning.Dipping down into the valley, the wind now worries over the murmuring blue tongue of the Serchio river on its journey to the Tyrrhenian Sea.

It slips—an unseen spirit—under Devil's bridge.Shivers along the great gray hunch of the Devil's back.

Hissing over every ancient stone.Rising from the river, the wind picks up speed, hastening toward the woods.

Hurtling toward chestnut trees spaced like the pews of a great Duomo.The wind now weaves between golden leaves.

Whispering quick consonants between the branches, borrowing an autumnal aura.Sweet sigh of ripe chestnuts and shed leaves.

And here—where the wind steals woodland scents—hides a curiosity.Cloistered by soil, moss, stone and leaf litter, a thing unseen—a thing quite mysterious—lies in waiting. A thing that sits buried, like old bones. What lies under the soil has stayed secret.

It is an underground barterer.A schemer who has set a trap in the soil.

A sylvan swindler.A tormentor. A tiny god.  Swelling to irresistible bulk, it has ripened into a knobbled fruit of corruption.

And now the time has come.The tiny god releases a lusty sigh, so...