Iain Pears

In this dazzling historical mystery, John Stone, financier and arms dealer, dies falling out of a window at his London home. The quest to uncover the truth behind his death plays out against the backdrop of high-stakes international finance, Europe's first great age of espionage, and the start of the twentieth century's arms race.

In 1960s Oxford, Professor Henry Lytten is attempting to write a fantasy novel that forgoes the magic of his predecessors, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. He finds an unlikely confidante in his quick-witted, inquisitive young neighbor Rosie. One day, while chasing Lytten's cat, Rosie encounters a doorway in his cellar. She steps through and finds herself in an idyllic, pastoral land where Storytellers are revered above all others. There she meets a...

Paris can do strange things to a man's mind—like make him agree to an apparently harmless favor of escorting a picture to Rome. It seems routine work, and art dealer Jonathan Argyll gets to meet his girlfriend, Flavia, who works for Rome's Art Theft Squad.

"The Death of Socrates" is a particularly nondescript piece, so Jonathan can sympathize when its recipient refuses to accept delivery. But in an unusual twist, the same man is found

...

Sent to Venice by Rome's Art Theft Squad to help local police solve a murder, Flavia di Stefano embarks on a search for the killer of a member of the famed Titian research committee.

As Flavia di Stefano, acting head of Italy's Art Theft Squad, works to retrieve a stolen painting without publicity or payment, her husband, art historian Jonathan Argyll, is preparing a birthday gift: "the provenance of a small Renaissance painting, an Immaculate Conception," that hangs on a friend's wall.--Jacket.