An aspiring writer, an athlete from a professional cyclist family and a mathematics prodigy find their bond tested by a love triangle and the spread of anti-Semitism and fascism in 1937 Italy. "Elisabetta, Marco, and Sandro grow up as the best of friends despite their differences. Elisabetta is a feisty beauty who dreams of becoming a novelist; Marco the brash and athletic son in a family of professional cyclists; and Sandro a Jewish mathematics...

Bestselling novelist Sarah Dunant has long been drawn to the high drama of Renaissance Italy: power, passion, beauty, brutality, and the ties of blood. With In the Name of the Family, she offers a thrilling exploration of the House of Borgia's final years, in the company of a young diplomat named Niccolò Machiavelli. It is 1502 and Rodrigo Borgia, a self-confessed womanizer and master of political corruption, is now on the papal throne as Alexander...

"September 1943: German forces occupy Rome. Gestapo boss Obersturmbannf�uhrer Paul Hauptmann rules with terror. Hunger is widespread. Rumors fester. The war's outcome is far from certain. Diplomats, refugees, and escaped Allied prisoners flee for protection into Vatican City, at one fifth of a square mile the world's smallest state, a neutral, independent country within Rome. A small band of unlikely friends led by a courageous Irish priest is...

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.

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.

To rescue her missing mother, thirteen-year-old Mira must travel to sixteenth-century Rome, where she befriends the painter Caravaggio and other artists and scientists under suspicion for being forward thinking individuals.

Sicily, April 16 1677. From his deathbed, Charles III's viceroy, Anielo de Guzmán y Carafa, marquis of Castle Rodrigo, names his wife, Doña Eleonora, as his successor. Eleonora de Moura is a highly intelligent and capable woman who immediately applies her political acumen to heal the scarred soul of Palermo, a city afflicted by poverty, misery, and the frequent uprisings they entail.The Marquise implements measures that include lowering the price...

By the end of the fifteenth century, the beauty and creativity of Italy are matched by its brutality and corruption, nowhere more than in Rome and inside the Church. When Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia buys his way into the papacy as Alexander VI, he is defined not just by his wealth or his passionate love for his illegitimate children, but by his blood: He is a Spanish Pope in a city run by Italians. If the Borgias are to triumph, this charismatic, consummate...

While on a mission to prove to Merlin that they can use magic wisely, Jack and Annie travel to seventeenth-century Venice, Italy, to save the city from disaster.

"Trapped in Tuscany as war rages along the Gothic Line, Vittoria Guidi doesn't understand where her allegiances should lie. With her Scots-Italian father or Fascist mother? With Mussolini, or her King? With the life she wants, or is told to live? As Germans occupy the mountains surrounding Barga and American Buffalo soldiers draw near, loyalties are tested and families torn apart. Frank Chapel, a young, black soldier fighting for a country that refuses...