Vienna Passion is a novel of love, mistresses and music. It tells the story of Rosa, a chambermaid, royal mistress and murderess, whose life mirrors all the sordid glamour of Vienna at the turn of the century. Rosa's story is interleaved with another woman's tentative romance: that of Magnolia, a young New Yorker, and her singing-teacher in Vienna. Despite her lover's hypochondria and mother-fixation, however, Magnolia is just as much her own woman as Rosa ever was. More so, indeed, than either woman could ever have imagined.