Long ago in Venice, Italy, a young orphan named Candida copies music each night for the orchestra of orphans who play for famed composer Vivaldi, and her imaginings find their way into one of his concertos.

"Eleven-year-old Renzo must teach himself to blow glass with the help of a girl who has a mysterious connection to her falcon"--

While her tyrannical family is out of favor in Italy, young Catherine de Medici is raised in convents, then in 1533, when she is fourteen, her uncle, Pope Clement VII, arranges for her marriage to prince Henri of France, who is destined to become king.

Seventeen-year-old Mimi Wallingford's stage fright and fight with her mother on the closing night of Romeo and Juliet are nothing compared to the troubles she faces when she and her leading man are transported to Shakespeare's Verona, where she decides to give the real Juliet a happy ending.

The mysterious box that Ranger the golden retriever found in the garden transports him back to first century Rome, where he must rescue Marcus, a young servant boy, and Quintus, a volunteer gladiator, from the brutal world of the Colosseum.

In 1715 Italy, eight-year-old Anna Maria Lombardini arrives at a Venice orphanage with little but the special violin her father made for her, but when her teacher, Antonio Vivaldi, favors her over a fellow student, the beloved instrument winds up in a canal. Includes glossary and historical note.

The star-crossed tale of Romeo and Juliet, told through the eyes of Romeo's cousin, Benvolio, a thief known as the Prince of Shadows.

"It is 1900, and the evil traitor, Bajamonte Tiepolo, is back, his baddened magic spreading across the globe. Now Teo and Renzo must save both Venice and London, before it is too late"--

Her mother died when she was twelve, and suddenly Artemisia Gentileschi had a stark choice: a life as a nun in a convent or a life grinding pigment for her father's paint. She chose paint. By the time she was seventeen, Artemisia did more than grind pigment. She was one of Rome's most talented painters, even if no one knew her name. But Rome in 1610 was a city where men took what they wanted from women, and in the aftermath of rape Artemisia faced...

A young journalist goes to Venice, Italy, to interview a famous violinist, who tells the story of his parents' incarceration by the Nazis, and explains why they can no longer listen to the music of Mozart.