Renaissance Fiction

Jack and Annie know they have to search for one of the four secrets of happiness to help Merlin the magician find joy in his life again. And so they head off in the magic tree house for Florence, Italy, in the early 1500s to spend the day with one of the greatest artists and inventors of all time: Leonardo da Vinci!

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.

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.

A riveting love story with a captivating mystery at its heart, Mistress of the Sun resurrects a fascinating female figure from the shadows of history, and illuminates both the power of true and perfect love and the rash actions we take to capture and tame it.

This is a fantastic first novel in a trilogy. Set in a parallel world, in an Italy that in this world is called Talia and in a Venice that in this world is called Bellezza, the narrative follows Lucien, who in this world is ill with cancer. Given a marbled notebook to help him communicate when his throat hurts too much to speak, this notebook is the means that transports Lucien to this magical, dangerous new world. This is a world which is set in the C16, and thrills to the delight of political intrigue, including assassination attempts both foiled and successful.

Elle Newmark's richly seductive prose brings to life the color and scandal of 15th-century Venice. Through Luciano, a street urchin apprenticed to a great chef in the palace of the doge, Newmark tells a wicked tale of political and papal intrigue. In Venice where every whisper is a secret or a lie, Luciano's initiation into the chef's spicy world makes for deliciously suspenseful listening.

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.

Niccolò Rising, book one of the series, finds us in Bruges, 1460. Jousting is the genteel pastime, and successful merchants are, of necessity, polyglot. Street smart, brilliant at figures, adept at the subtleties of diplomacy and the well-timed untruth, Dunnett's hero rises from wastrel to prodigy in a breathless adventure that wins him the hand of the strongest woman in Bruges and the hatred of two powerful enemies.

After centuries locked in an endless cycle of poverty, persecution, and barbarity, Europe has finally emerged into the Age of Enlightenment. Scientists, philosophers, scholars, and poets alike believe this to be a new era of reason and hope for all. But the forces of darkness haven’t completely dissipated, as Spain hunts and butchers any who dare to defy its ironclad Catholic orthodoxy. Only one nation can fight the black shadow that threatens this new age, and that is Britain, now ruled by a brilliant young Queen Elizabeth I.

February, 1586. When the queen’s spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham, learns that Ursula is to visit her relatives in Devon, he asks her to find out what has happened to two of his local agents, who have been strangely silent recently. On arrival in the small Devon village of Zeal Aquatio, Ursula discovers that both spies in question have met with mysterious - and fatal - accidents. Or is there more to it than that? What did the two spies find out that got them killed?

It is 1502, and seven-year-old Bianca de Nevada lives at Montefiore, the farm of her father, Don Vicente. But one day a noble entourage makes its way up to the farm. In the presence of Cesare Borgia and his sister, the lovely and vain Lucrezia, no one can claim innocence for very long. When Borgia sends Don Vicente on a quest, he leaves Bianca under the care of Lucrezia. She plots a dire fate for the young girl in the woods below the farm, but salvation can be found in the dark forest as well.

1547: Pedro Gonsalvus, a young boy living on the island of Tenerife, understands that he is different from the other children in his village. He is mercilessly ridiculed for the shiny layer of hair covering his body from head to toe. When he is kidnapped off the beach near his home, he finds himself delivered by a slave broker into the dangerous and glamorous world of France’s royal court. There “Monsieur Sauvage,” as he is known, learns French, literature, and sword fighting, becoming an attendant to the French King Henri II and a particular favorite of his queen.

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.

Harlem, 1927. Twenty-seven-year-old Louise Lloyd has found the perfect job! She is the new manager of the Dove, a club owned by her close friend Rafael Moreno. There Louise meets Nora Davies, one of the girls she was kidnapped with a decade ago. The two women—along with Rafael and his sister, Louise’s girlfriend, Rosa Maria—spend the night at the Dove, drinking and talking. The next morning, Rosa Maria wakes up covered in blood, with no memory of the previous night. Nora is lying dead in the middle of the dance floor.

From the author of The Good Wife of Bath comes this brilliant recreation of the vibrant, optimistic but politically treacherous world of London's Restoration theatre, where we are introduced to the remarkable playwright Aphra Behn, now a feminist icon but then an anomaly, who gravitated to the stage—a place where artifice and disguise are second nature and accommodates those who do not fit in.

In the Houses of Montague and Capulet, there is only one goal: power. The boys are born to fight and die for honor and-if they survive-marry for influence and money, not love. The girls are assets, to be spent wisely. Their wishes are of no import. Their fates are written on the day they are born.Benvolio Montague, cousin to Romeo, knows all this. He expects to die for his cousin, for his house, but a spark of rebellion still lives inside him.

Only in the world of the theater can Nat Field find an escape from the tragedies that have shadowed his young life. So he is thrilled when he is chosen to join an American drama troupe traveling to London to perform A Midsummer Night's Dream in a new replica of the famous Globe theater. Shortly after arriving in England, Nat goes to bed ill and awakens transported back in time 400 years - to another London, and another production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Amid the bustle and excitement of an Elizabethan theatrical production, Nat finds the warm, nurturing father figure missing from his life - in none other than William Shakespeare.

Dr. Whitfield is looking forward to a sabbatical year of peace and quiet, gardening in his backyard, and tinkering with what he calls his latest "unpublishable book". As the year begins, he is drawn by a series of seeming coincidences into involvement with a group of characters from across Europe, including a family that has been the target of assassination attempts by unknown powers. During his journey to Romania, the situation in which he finds himself becomes more sinister than it first seemed.

Watch the drama unfold with this trio as more secrets are revealed and lives are torn apart, all in the name of love. How will it end? Will Destiny finally get her man, or will her husband's mistress end up on top?

After unwittingly helping her mother poison King Louis XIV, 17-year-old alchemist Mirabelle Monvoisin is forced to see her mother's Shadow Society in a horrifying new light: They're not heroes of the people, as they've always claimed to be, but murderers. She herself included. Mira tries to ease her guilt by brewing helpful curatives, but her hunger tonics and headache remedies cannot right past wrongs or save the dissenters whom her mother vows to purge.