A Mapmaker’s Dream: The Meditations of Fra Mauro, Cartographer to the Court of Venice

Cry to Heaven

Anne Rice · 544 pages

In a sweeping saga of music and vengeance, the acclaimed author of The Vampire Chronicles draws readers into eighteenth-century Italy, bringing to life the decadence beneath the shimmering surface of Venice, the wild frivolity of Naples, and the magnetic terror of its shadow, Vesuvius. This is the story of the castrati, the exquisite and otherworldly sopranos whose graceful bodies and glorious voi

Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi

Geoff Dyer · 296 pages

A wildly original novel of erotic fulfillment and spiritual yearning. Every two years the international art world descends on Venice for the opening of the Biennale. Among them is Jeff Atman--a jaded and dissolute journalist--whose dedication to the cause of Bellini-fuelled partygoing is only intermittently disturbed by the obligation to file a story. When he meets the spellbinding Laura, he is re

Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

Evelyn Waugh · 370 pages

Stabat Mater

Tiziano Scarpa · 170 pages

Cecilia is a violinist who, during anguished sleepless nights, writes letters to the mother she never knew, haunted by her and hating her by turns. But things start to change when a new violin teacher arrives at the institute. The music of Vivaldi electrifies her and changes her attitude to life.

The Passion

Jeanette Winterson · 160 pages

Jeanette Winterson’s novels have established her as one of the most important young writers in world literature. The Passion is perhaps her most highly acclaimed work, a modern classic that confirms her special claim on the novel. Set during the tumultuous years of the Napoleonic Wars, The Passion intertwines the destinies of two remarkable people: Henri, a simple French soldier, who follows Napol

Miss Garnet's Angel

Salley Vickers · 365 pages

The Book of Madness and Cures

Regina O'Melveny · 328 pages

Synopsis Expand/Collapse Synopsis Dr. Gabriella Mondini, a strong-willed, young Venetian woman, has followed her father in the path of medicine. She possesses a singleminded passion for the art of physick, even though, in 1590, the male-dominated establishment is reluctant to accept a woman doctor. So when her father disappears on a mysterious journey, Gabriella's own status in the Venetian me

The Wings of the Dove

Henry James · 510 pages

Beautiful Kate Croy may have been left penniless by her relatives, but her bold, ambitious nature ensures she will not succumb meekly to a life of poverty. If the financial circumstances of Merton Densher, the man she is passionately in love with, are not sufficient to secure her future, perhaps her cunning will. So when Milly Theale arrives in Europe from America, laden with wealth but also grave

An Equal Music

Vikram Seth

Death in Venice

Thomas Mann · 237 pages

Celebrated novella of a middle-aged German writer℗s tormented passion for a Polish youth met on holiday in Venice, and its tragic consequences. Powerful evocation of the mysterious forces of death and disintegration in the midst of existence, and the isolation of the artist in 20th-century life. This edition provides an excellent new translation and extensive commentary on many facets of the story

The Mirror Thief

Martin Seay · 592 pages

In sixteenth century Venice, the famed makers of Venetian glass faced death if they tried to leave the island... but one man schemes to outwit the enforcers of the edict. In 1958 Venice Beach, California, and in today's Venetian casino in Las Vegas, other schemers launch similarly dangerous plans to get away with a secret. As the three stories weave together through time and space, the reader is d

In the Company of the Courtesan

Sarah Dunant · 371 pages

My lady, Fiammetta Bianchini, was plucking her eyebrows and biting color into her lips when the unthinkable happened and the Holy Roman Emperor's army blew a hole in the wall of God's eternal city, letting in a flood of half-starved, half-crazed troops bent on pillage and punishment.Thus begins In the Company of the Courtesan, Sarah Dunant's epic novel of life in Renaissance Italy. Escaping the sa

The Gondola Maker

Laura Morelli · 298 pages

In 16th-century Venice, the heir to a family boatyard rejects his destiny but is drawn to restore an old gondola with the dream of taking a girl for a ride.-- Book cover.

The Temporary Gentleman

Sebastian Barry · 310 pages

"In this highly anticipated new novel, Irishman Jack McNulty is a "temporary gentleman"--An Irishman whose commission in the British army in World War II was never permanent. Sitting in his lodgings in Accra, Ghana, in 1957, he's writing the story of his life with desperate urgency. He cannot take one step further without examining all the extraordinary events that he has seen. A lifetime of war a

Us Conductors

Sean Michaels · 347 pages

"In a finely woven series of flashbacks and correspondence, Lev Termen, the Russian scientist, inventor, and spy, tells the story of his life to his "one true love, " Clara Rockmore, the finest theremin player in the world. In the first half of the book, we learn of Termen's early days as a scientist in Leningrad during the Bolshevik Revolution, the acclaim he receives as the inventor of the there

Stone Virgin

Barry Unsworth · 309 pages

When conservationist Simon Raikes goes to Venice to restore a statue of the Madonna, he is unprepared for the effect this stone virgin's strange, seductive beauty and mysterious past will have on his life.

The Lie

Helen Dunmore · 293 pages

"Cornwall, 1920, early spring. A young man stands on a headland, looking out to sea. He is back from the war, homeless and without family. Behind him lie the mud, barbed-wire entanglements and terror of the trenches. Behind him is also the most intense relationship of his life. Daniel has survived, but the horror and passion of the past seem more real than the quiet fields around him. He is about

Fly Away Peter

David Malouf · 160 pages

Icefields

Thomas Wharton · 240 pages

Leaving England for Canada in 1898, Doctor Edward Byrne has no idea that the glacier he has set out to study will come to absorb his every thought. When he arrives in Jasper, he finds himself attracted to then mysterious presence of the big white chunk. His religious appreciation of its movement keeps him in town much longer than anticipated, living out a symbiotic relationship with a block of ice

The Untouchable

John Banville · 410 pages

(From the Hardcover edition) Twenty years after his "retirement," ex-spy Victor Maskell attempts to come to terms with what has happened to his life by embarking on his memoirs. This is the plot which fuels Banville's stunning new novel--a story that goes beyond the mere facts of espionage to penetrate the intricate heart of the spy.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

Ron Hansen · 304 pages

Friendship becomes rivalry and the quest for fame becomes obsession.

Paradise

Abdulrazak Gurnah · 256 pages

The Electric Michelangelo

Sarah Hall · 352 pages

"In the lyrical prose that has already become her trademark, Sarah Hall's new novel tells the story of Cy Parks, from his childhood years spent in a seaside guest house for consumptives with his mother, Reeda, to his apprenticeship as a tattoo-artist with Eliot Riley - a scraper with a reputation as a Bolshevik and a drinker to boot." "His skills acquired and a thirst for experience burning within

Requiem

Frances Itani · 317 pages

During World War II, Canada interned citizens of Japanese descent, just as the United States did. Here, Itani recaptures history through fiction by imagining the story of young Bin Okuma and his family, who were transported from their British Columbia home to a desolate area 100 miles from the "Protected Zone" and only grudgingly given access to food, plumbing, and electricity. Fifty years later,