Indigenous peoples cancelled by a burgeoning empire. Devastating earthquakes level ancient monuments. Marauding invaders loot and pillage art treasures. And yet, verdant hillsides ripple with vineyards and olive groves. Dramatic blue mountains shelter shepherds, freedom fighters, and necromancers. Lined with palms and orange trees, the luxurious coast is monitored by medieval towers and pagan temples. This is the Land of Piceno-Le Marche, Italy--whose founding symbol picus, sacred...

High in the Sibillini Mountains of central Italy, famous since Roman times for their curative waters, a killer deposits his victims' bodies within the ancient local churches. An environmental fanatic, a mystical cult, a pragmatic business plan...?"A story made of crimes, corruption, madness, and ambition. But also a tale of how humans are the only animals capable of polluting themselves, their souls, the world around them, and the people they love.It's second nature.

In this “absolutely electrifying” (Jeffrey Deaver) thriller and huge international hit, two people—each shattered by their past—team up to solve a series of killings and abductions that may hint at something far more sinister at play.When a woman is beheaded in a park outside Rome and her six-year-old son goes missing, the police see an easy solution: they arrest the woman’s husband and await his confession. But the chief of Rome’s major crimes unit has doubts.Secretly, he ...

In her brilliant debut, Storey brings early 16th-century Florence alive, entering with extraordinary empathy into the minds and souls of two Renaissance masters, creating a stunning art history thriller. From 1501 to 1505, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti both lived and worked in Florence. Leonardo was a charming, handsome fifty year-old at the peak of his career. Michelangelo was a temperamental sculptor in his mid-twenties, desperate to make a name for himself.Michel...

The basis of the Sundance TV series GomorrahA New York Times Notable Book of the YearGomorrah is a bold and important work of investigative writing that holds global significance, one heroic young man's impassioned story of a place under the rule of a murderous organization.A groundbreaking major bestseller in Italy, Gomorrah is Roberto Saviano's gripping nonfiction account of the decline of Naples...

Read the true story that inspired the hit Netflix series! In the nonfiction tradition of John Berendt and Erik Larson, the author of the #1 NYT bestseller The Lost City of the Monkey God presents a gripping account of crime and punishment in the lush hills surrounding Florence as he seeks to uncover one of the most infamous figures in Italian history.In 2000, Douglas Preston fulfilled a dream to move his family to Italy. Then he d...

A gripping conspiracy thriller series for fans of Scott Mariani and Dan Brown.On a trip to Prague to visit an exhibition of precious objects of alchemy, Lorenzo Aragona finds himself caught in the dark murder of an old antiquarian, also fond of mysteries. He is suddenly catapulted into a hidden and disturbing world, run by a mysterious brotherhood that will force him to return to Naples.Helped by the Masons in the deciphering of a series of...

Florence, 1966. The rain is never-ending. When a young boy vanishes on his way home from school the police fear the worst, and Inspector Bordelli begins an increasingly desperate investigation.Then the flood hits. During the night of November 4th, the swollen River Arno, already lapping the arches of the Ponte Vecchio, breaks its banks and overwhelms the city. Streets become rushing torrents, the force of the water sweeping away cars and trees, doors, shutters and anything else in its wake...

“A murder mystery, a model of investigative reporting, a celebration of the fierce bonds that hold families together through tragedies…Murder in Matera is a gem.” — San Francisco Chronicle"Tantalizing" — NPR“A thrilling detective story… Stapinski pursues the study of her family’s criminal genealogy with unexpected emotional results.” — Library ...

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni exercised a huge influence on the development of Western art. He is considered a nominee for the title of the archetypal Renaissance man, along with Leonardo da Vinci. Michelangelo was the first Western artist whose biography was published while he was alive. Giorgio Vasari proposed that he was the high point of all artistic achievement of the Renaissance. In this way Michelangelo, indirectly, marked the beginning of the next major movement in Wes...

Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, mathematician, military-engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, and writer. His genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal. Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance Man, a man of "unquenchable curiosity" and "feverishly inventive imagination". He is widely considered to be one of the greatest...

An Italian detective who brings his "case to a solution out of Agatha Christie as satisfying as it is unexpected" is "a memorable companion in crime" ( Kirkus Reviews).Six months after being exiled from his beloved Rome, Deputy Police Chief Rocco Schiavone has settled into a routine in the cold, quiet, chronically backward alpine town of Aosta: an espresso at home, breakfast in the piazza, and a morning joint in his office.A little self-medication he...