Renaissance Fiction

L’opera al nero è la storia di un personaggio immaginario, Zenone, medico, alchimista, filosofo, dalla nascita illegittima a Bruges nei primi anni...

How to Be Both is a novel all about art's versatility. Borrowing from painting's fresco technique to make an original literary double-take, it's a fast-moving, genre-bending conversation between forms, times, truths and fictions. There's a renaissance artist of the 1460s. There's the child of a child of the 1960s. Two tales of love and injustice twist into a singular yarn where time gets timeless, structural gets playful, knowing gets mysterious, fictional gets real - and all life's givens get given a second chance.

Benvenuto Cellini, master artisan of Renaissance Italy, once crafted a beautiful amulet prized for its unimaginable power - and untold menace. Now the quest to recover this legendary artifact depends upon one man: David Franco, a brilliant but skeptical young scholar at Chicago's world-renowned Newberry Library.

Some doors are better left unopened. Some doors, you don’t want to find out what lies behind them. In the Forbidden Doors series by best-selling author Bill Myers, teenager Rebecca “Becka” Williams, her younger brother Scott, and her friend, Ryan Riordan, are swept into heart-stopping encounters with an all-too-real invisible world - a world fraught with deception and spiritual adversaries that promise goodness and enlightenment but will stop at nothing to destroy life, sanity, and human souls. Witchcraft. Reincarnation. Ouija Boards. UFOs. Shamanism.

ACTION, INTRIGUES, COMPLOTS, AMOURS : UN RÉCIT FOUGUEUX AUX MILLES PÉRIPÉTIES. Paris, 1572. Dans une époque secouée par les guerres de religion, le jeune roi protestant de Navarre épouse Marguerite de Valois, dite Margot. C'est un mariage purement politique qui a pour objectif d'établir durablement la paix entre protestants et catholiques. Les chefs du parti huguenot sont réunis à Paris pour les noces lorsque qu'éclate le massacre de la Saint-Barthélemy, fomenté par les Guise et le roi Charles IX.

Nel maggio del 1624 un uomo accompagna la figlia sulla spiaggia di Santa Severa, dove si è arenata una balena. Esiste anche ciò che è al di là del nostro orizzonte, è questo che il padre insegna a Plautilla. Una visione che contribuirà a fare di quella bambina un'artista, misteriosa pittrice e architettrice nel torbido splendore della Roma barocca.

Montpellier in 1566 - only fools walk the streets at night unarmed while a profession of faith in the wrong company can lead to a knife in the back. Not even this proud city of philosophers is safe from the menaces that endanger the peace of France. The city militia are struggling to contend with the lawlessness and religious hatred that threaten to tear the whole country in two.

Widge is an orphan with a rare talent for shorthand. His fearsome master has just one demand: steal Shakespeare's play "Hamlet" - or else. Widge has no choice but to follow orders, so he works his way into the heart of the Globe Theatre, where Shakespeare's players perform. As full of twists and turns as a London alleyway, this entertaining novel is rich in period details, colorful characters, villainy, and drama.

A girl as beautiful as Simonetta Cattaneo never wants for marriage proposals in 15th-century Italy, but she jumps at the chance to marry Marco Vespucci. Marco is young, handsome, and well-educated. Not to mention he is one of the powerful Medici family's favored circle. Even before her marriage with Marco is set, Simonetta is swept up into Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici's glittering circle of politicians, poets, artists, and philosophers. The men of Florence - most notably the rakish Giuliano de' Medici - become enthralled with her beauty.

Pensando al Rinascimento è probabile che vi vengano in mente lo splendore delle città, le opere sublimi, la magnificenza di signori e papi. Aprendo questo libro, mettete da parte ciò che sapete: verrete travolti dallo stupore. State per cominciare un viaggio nei meandri di un tempo imprevedibile, fatto di voli pindarici e cadute fragorose. Popolato di artisti strepitosi oggi dimenticati, contesse guerriere e frati ribelli. Al vostro fianco in questa avventura, ci saranno due giganti della storia dell'arte destinati a odiarsi per tutta la vita.

From the acclaimed author of The Night Portrait comes a stunning historical novel about two women, separated by 500 years, who each hide Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa - with unintended consequences.

1812. Arriving back in England after his successes in the Adriatic, Captain Sir Thomas Kydd is bestowed with honours. In London, he's greeted by the Prince Regent, who, despite Kydd's protestations that he's happy with his present command, insists he be given a bigger ship - HMS Thunderer, a 74-gun ship of the line. But she's old, and being part of a standing fleet, Kydd's chances of further fame and distinction are slim indeed.

Tre redattori editoriali, dopo aver frequentato a lungo autori che si dilettano di scienze occulte, società segrete e complotti cosmici, decidono di inventare, con avventata leggerezza, un Piano. Ma qualcuno li prende sul serio. Affabulatorio, incalzante e coltissimo, è questo un romanzo che spazia furiosamente nel tempo, dove fanno la loro comparsa una sterminata serie di personaggi, di miti, di leggende, dai Templari ai Rosacroce, dai Miti Celtici ai Culti dell'antico Egitto, dal Santo Graal ai Vangeli Apocrifi, da Napoleone a Hitler, a Cagliostro.

Roma, settembre 1683. In una locanda nel cuore della Città Santa la morte improvvisa di un viaggiatore semina il panico: veleno o peste? Per paura del contagio, gli ospiti vengono rinchiusi in quarantena nelle proprie stanze. Tra loro c'è l'abate Atto Melani, ex cantante castrato e ora agente segreto del Re Sole, deciso a scoprire cosa si celi dietro quella strana morte. Atto dovrà scontrarsi con le reticenze e le paure degli altri ospiti, con lo spettro della peste che aleggia sulla locanda.

This book compiles both the first (1855) and final (1892) versions of Walt Whitman's masterpiece Song of Myself in one volume, making it unique and valuable for students of American literature.

Beatrice is the convent's librarian. For years, she has shunned the company of her sisters, finding solace only with her manuscripts. Then, one carnival night, two women, bleeding and stricken, are abandoned outside the convent's walls. Moments from death, one of them presses something into Beatrice's hands: a bewitching book whose pages have a dangerous life of their own.

Artists flock here, not just for wealth and fame, but for revolutionary color. Yet artist Giorgione “Zorzo” Barbarelli’s career hangs in the balance. Competition is fierce, and his debts are piling up. When Zorzo hears a rumor of a mysterious new pigment, brought to Venice by the richest man in Europe, he sets out to acquire the color and secure his name in history.

In the autumn of 1558, church bells across England ring out the joyous news that Elizabeth I is the new queen. But one woman hears the tidings with utter dread. Amy Dudley, wife of Sir Robert, knows that the peal of bells she hears will summon her husband once more to power, intrigue, and a passionate love affair with the young queen.

France, 1562. Les tensions entre catholiques et protestants montent, le royaume se déchire. Le prince de Condé et le duc de Guise se livrent un combat sans merci. Les huguenots sont persécutés, les massacres se succèdent. À Carcassonne, Marguerite Joubert, une jeune libraire catholique, fait la connaissance de Piet, un protestant converti dont la vie est en danger.

Isola d'Elba, 1544. I corsari turchi, al comando di Khayr al-Din detto Barbarossa, sbarcano nottetempo su una spiaggia accanto a Longone – l'odierna Porto Azzurro – dove Lucero e sua sorella Angiolina si preparano alla pesca dei calamari. Lucero viene ferito, Angiolina rapita. Il mondo si apre, la storia comincia. Lucero, guidato da un indomabile sentimento di vendetta, si trasforma – anche grazie all'incontro con il capitano Rodrigo, compagno e mentore – in un "duellante imbattibile" e in un soldato di ventura.