AmongReaders.com
📚 AmongReaders — track what you read, talk chapter by chapter without spoilers, and read with friends. Free.Join AmongReadersSign in

🧲 Books like this

The Midwife of Venice

Roberta Rich · back to the book

What’s in it

Tap a tag: ❤ = this matters to me · tap again ✕ = don’t care · again to reset. The list below updates each time.

24 books with the same feel

Include books by the same author
❤️

The Wonder

Emma Donoghue · 304 pages

Set in the Irish Midlands in the 1850s, Emma Donoghue's *The Wonder* - inspired by numerous European and North American cases of 'fasting girls' between the sixteenth century and the twentieth - is a psychological thriller about a child's murder threatening to happen in slow motion before our eyes. Pitting all the seductions of fundamentalism against sense and love, it is a searing examination

HealerReligious IdentityAtmosphericHistorical Fiction
❤️

Sacred Hearts

Sarah Dunant · 443 pages

The year is 1570, and in the convent of Santa Caterina, in the Italian city of Ferrara, noblewomen find space to pursue their lives under God's protection. But any community, however smoothly run, suffers tremors when it takes in someone by force. And the arrival of Santa Caterina's new novice sets in motion a chain of events that will shake the convent to its core. Ripped by her family from an il

HealerReligious IdentityAtmosphericHistorical Fiction
❤️

The Glassblower of Murano

Marina Fiorato · 348 pages

VeniceAtmosphericHistorical FictionFemale Lead
❤️

Vivaldi's Virgins

Barbara Quick · 294 pages

In this enthralling new novel, Barbara Quick re-creates eighteenth-century Venice at the height of its splendor and decadence. A story of longing and intrigue, half-told truths and toxic lies, Vivaldi's Virgins unfolds through the eyes of Anna Maria dal Violin, one of the elite musicians cloistered in the foundling home where Antonio Vivaldi—known as the Red Priest of Venice—is maestro and compose

VeniceAtmosphericHistorical FictionFemale Lead
❤️

The Girl from Venice

Martin Cruz Smith · 320 pages

"The highly anticipated new standalone novel from Martin Cruz Smith, whom The Washington Post has declared "that uncommon phenomenon: a popular and well-regarded crime novelist who is also a writer of real distinction," The Girl from Venice is a suspenseful World War II love story set against the beauty, mystery, and danger of occupied Venice. Venice, 1945. The war may be waning, but the city know

VeniceAtmosphericHistorical FictionFemale Lead
❤️

Daughter of Venice

Donna Jo Napoli · 274 pages

In 1592, Donata is a noble girl living in a palazzo on the Grand Canal. Girls of her class receive no education and rarely leave the palazzo. In a noble family, only one daughter and one son will be allowed to marry; Donata, like all younger daughters, will be sent to a convent. Donata longs to be tutored like her brothers and to see the Venice she has glimpsed only on the map. What is the world b

VeniceReligious IdentityHistorical FictionFemale Lead
❤️

Illuminations

Mary Sharratt

HealerAtmosphericReligious IdentityHistorical Fiction
❤️

Venom

Fiona Paul

In Renaissance Venice, orphaned Cassandra Caravello is one of the elite but feels trapped in the city of water until she stumbles upon a murdered woman and is drawn into a dangerous world of courtesans, grave robbers, and secret societies, guided by Falco, a mysterious and alluring artist.

VeniceAtmosphericHistorical FictionFemale Lead
❤️

The Visitant: A Venetian Ghost Story

Megan Chance · 327 pages

"After she nearly ruins her family with a terrible misstep, Elena Spira is sent to Venice to escape disgrace and to atone by caring for the ailing Samuel Farber. But the crumbling and decaying Ca' Basilio palazzo, where Samuel is ensconced, holds tragic secrets, and little does Elena know how profoundly they will impact her. Soon she begins to sense that she is being watched by something. And when

VeniceAtmosphericHistorical FictionFemale Lead
❤️

Winterwood

Dorothy Eden · 256 pages

Pursued by a scandalous trial that rocked London society, Lavinia Hurst has escaped, penniless, to Venice. There she becomes acquainted with the Meryons - Daniel, the handsome head of the family to whom she's immediately drawn, his vicious wife, their daughter who was crippled by a tragic accident, and the great-aunt - an ancient woman of enormous wealth who is near death. The deeply troubled girl

VeniceAtmosphericHistorical FictionFemale Lead
❤️

Year of Wonders

Geraldine Brooks · 310 pages

This is the story of a young woman's struggle to save her family and her soul during the year of 1666, when plague suddenly visits her small Derbyshire village and the villagers, inspired by a charismatic preacher, elect to quarantine themselves.

HealerReligious IdentityAtmosphericHistorical Fiction
❤️

Quietly in Their Sleep

Donna Leon · 258 pages

VeniceReligious IdentityAtmospheric
❤️

The Minister's Daughter

Julie Hearn · 263 pages

In 1645 in England, the daughters of the town minister successfully accuse a local healer and her granddaughter of witchcraft to conceal an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, but years later during the 1692 Salem trials their lie has unexpected repercussions.

HealerReligious IdentityAtmosphericHistorical Fiction
❤️

The Venetian Mask

Rosalind Laker · 458 pages

Enduring friendships and long-held vendettas come alive against the splendor and decadence of eighteenth-century Venice.In 1775 Venice--known to outsiders as "the brothel of Europe"--the tradition of mask-wearing has allowed adultery and debauchery to flourish. But Marietta and Elena, two dear friends at the Ospedale della Pieta, a world-famous orphanage and music school for girls, know little of

VeniceAtmosphericHistorical FictionFemale Lead
❤️

Corrag

Susan Fletcher · 366 pages

The Massacre of Glencoe happened at 5am on 13th February 1692 when 37 members of the Macdonald clan were killed by government troops who had enjoyed the clan's hospitality for the previous ten days. Many more died from exposure in the mountains.

HealerReligious IdentityAtmosphericHistorical Fiction
❤️

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

VeniceAtmosphericHistorical FictionFemale Lead
❤️

The Tiger's Wife

Tea Obreht · 360 pages

Remembering childhood stories her grandfather once told her, young physician Natalia becomes convinced that he spent his last days searching for "the deathless man," a vagabond who claimed to be immortal. As Natalia struggles to understand why her grandfather, a deeply rational man would go on such a farfetched journey, she stumbles across a clue that leads her to the extraordinary story of the ti

HealerReligious IdentityAtmosphericHistorical Fiction
❤️

The Virgin Blue

Tracy Chevalier · 304 pages

Never before published in the United States, this first novel is released by the critically acclaimed author of "Girl with a Pearl Earring" and "Falling Angels." Readers meet Ella Turner and Isabelle du Moulin--two women born centuries apart, yet bound by a fateful family legacy.

HealerReligious IdentityHistorical FictionAtmospheric
❤️

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.

VeniceAtmosphericHistorical Fiction
❤️

The Rossetti Letter

Christi Phillips · 391 pages

A novel of seventeenth-century Venice and a modern woman's search for a courtesan's secret history.

VeniceAtmosphericHistorical FictionFemale Lead
❤️

The Heretic's Apprentice

Ellis Peters · 257 pages

This book examines what true piety is. The main character is the apprentice of a man, now dead, who is suddenly accused of having been a heretic. In this book, Edith Pargeter (aka Ellis Peters), through her hero Brother Cadfael, examines where heresy overlaps with true inquiry. Her characters are vindicated for pondering the mysteries of Christianity, including the trinity.

HealerReligious IdentityAtmosphericHistorical Fiction
❤️

Portrait of an Unknown Woman

Vanora Bennett · 400 pages

HealerReligious IdentityHistorical FictionFemale Lead
❤️

The Fallen Blade

Jon Courtenay Grimwood · 419 pages

Venice, 1407. The city is at the height of its powers. In theory, Duke Marco commands, but Marco is a simpleton so his aunt and uncle rule in his stead. They seem all powerful, yet live in fear of assassins better than their own. On the night their world changes, Marco's young cousin prays in the family chapel for deliverance from a forced marriage. It is her misfortune to be alone when Mamluk pir

VeniceAtmosphericHistorical Fiction
❤️

The Bellini Card

Jason Goodwin · 306 pages

VeniceAtmosphericHistorical Fiction
📖 New 2026 Kindles just released. See them on Amazon ↗