When he's apprised at the last minute of a mandatory meeting abroad, Stone Barrington rushes off to Europe for a whirlwind tour of business and, of course, pleasure. But from the start the trip seems to be cursed, plagued by suspicious "accidents" and unfortunate events, and some of Stone's plans go up in flames--literally. Not a believer in coincidence, Stone sets out to learn the true source of his curious misfortune and finds that what appeared...

"St. Peter's Square, Rome. White smoke signals that a new Pope has been chosen. Is it possible that the new Pope is a woman? The world is watching as historic crowds gather in Rome, waiting for news of a new Pope, one who promises to be unlike any other in the Church's history. Some followers are ecstatic, but the leading candidate has made a legion of powerful enemies. From a difficult childhood with drug addled parents, to a career as a doctor on...

Rome: In the small church of Santa Giuliana, a magnificent Caravaggio altarpiece disappears without a trace in the middle of the night.

Paris: In the basement vault of the Malevich Society, the curator is shocked to discover the disappearance of the Society's great treasure, White on White by Suprematist painter Kasimir Malevich.

London: At the National Gallery of Modern Art, the museum's newest acquisition is stolen just hours after

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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...

In Italy, an Austrian teacher devotes his energy to criticizing his family's noble heritage--its snobbery, hypocrisy, Catholicism, Nazism--but when on his parents' death he returns to take over the country estate, he does not practice what he preached. By the author of The Loser.

Mrs. Stone, a wealthy, fiftyish American widow, is beginning to adjust to the loss of her husband, her retirement from the stage, and the fading of her beauty, when she drifts into an affair with a cruel young gigolo.

"A Little Lumpen Novelita percolates with a young writer's fierce ambitions and intensely tender love of women. "Now I am a mother and a married woman, but not long ago I led a life of crime": so Bianca begins her tale of growing up the hard way in Rome in A Little Lumpen Novelita. Orphaned overnight as a teenager--"our parents died in a car crash on their first vacation without us"--she drops out of school, gets a crappy job, sees a terrible brightness...

Alice, an art student in New York City, has come to Rome in search of adventure and inspiration before settling down with her steady, safe fiancé. Meg and Alec, busy parents and successful business people from LA, are on a mission to find the holy grail, a certain blue tile that will make their home renovation complete-but soon it becomes clear that their marriage needs a makeover as well. Connie and Lizzie are women of a certain age-"Sometimes I...

An under-cover Roman policeman ravaged by guilt meets a woman on the run from her past.