Little Toot visits the beautiful palaces of Venice, travels its secluded waterways, and learns to blow Venetian glass bubbles which help him to save the city from a ship of thieving pirates.

The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860) is a work of art history by Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt. Recognized today as the founder of modern art history and as one of the key thinkers of the nineteenth century, Burckhardt changed not only the way we think about the Renaissance in relation to European and world history, but the value placed on art as a tool for understanding historical developments. The Civilization of the Renaissance...

"In the tradition of ONE DAY, a wryly romantic debut story about two strangers who meet briefly as teens in Florence and whose paths cross again many times over the course of the next sixteen years, until they're finally brought back together."--

"Environmental concerns become significant in Brunetti's work when an investigator from the Carabiniere, looking into the illegal hauling of garbage, asks for a favor. But the investigator is not the only one with a special request. His father-in-law needs help and a mysterious woman comes into the picture. Brunetti soon finds himself in the middle of an investigation into murder and corruption more dangerous than anything he's seen before."--from...

The Charterhouse of Parma chronicles the exploits of Fabrizio del Dongo, an ardent young aristocrat who joins Napoleon's army just before the Battle of Waterloo. Yet perhaps the novel's most unforgettable characters are the hero's beautiful aunt, the alluring Duchess of Sanseverina, and her lover, Count Mosca, who plot to further Fabrizio's political career at the treacherous court of Parma in a sweeping story that illuminates an entire epoch of European...

"The innocence of childhood collides with the stark aftermath of war in this wrenching and ultimately redemptive tale of family, seemingly impossible choices, and the winding paths to destiny, which sometimes take us to places far beyond our imaginings." - Lisa Wingate, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author of Before We Were Yours and The Book of Lost Friends Based on true events, a heartbreaking story of love, family, hope, and survival set in post-World...

When Commissario Brunetti is summoned in the middle of the night to the hospital bed of a senior pediatrician, he is confronted with more questions than answers. Three men--a young Carabiniere captain and two privates from out of town--have burst into the doctor's apartment in the middle of the night, attacked him and taken away his eighteenth-month old baby boy. What could have motivated an assault by the forces of the state so violent it has left...

An investigation into the vicious murder of a transvestite takes Venice Police Commissario Guido Brunetti on a trail that leads him into a confrontation with the highest levels of the financial world, the Italian government, and the Church.

Commissario Guido Brunetti's career comes under threat as his professional and personal lives unexpectedly intersect. It all begins with an early morning phone call. In the chill of the Venetian dawn, a sudden act of vandalism shatters the quiet of the city, and Brunetti is shocked to find that the culprit waiting to be apprehended at the scene is his own wife, Paola. She has taken a stand against a travel agency known for a certain kind of shady...

The body of an elderly woman is found in her apartment in Venice, and the prime suspect is her Romanian maid. The very afternoon of the murder, the maid is accidentally killed when she tries to cross the border to Romania. Commissario Guido Brunetti is the only one who believes her innocence and faces the challenge of clearing the maid's name and finding the actual killer. Brunetti thinks he has found a lead, but he may be tracking down the wrong...