The setting is Venice. The month November. Glittering worldliness and dubious shabbiness overlap, and passion and suspicion intertwine in a three-day Venetian adventure, bookended by a train's arrival and a ship's departure. She is an elegant Roman princess who scouts for one of the large English auction houses. He is a fascinating, mysterious man of indeterminate age, the leader of a tour group. He seems to know every language and all secrets. But who is he really...

Part whodunit, part satire of Turin’s ruling class, this lively and incisive detective novel by a beloved Italian literary duo navigates through the many layers of Turinese society, from the high to the low to the dubious.Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini were a pair of legendary Italian writers widely celebrated as pioneers of modern crime fiction. The Sunday Woman was the first detective novel they collaborated on together, and also the first to featur...

“Doyens of the Italian detective story, Fruttero and Lucentini, offer a perfect blend of the comedy of manners and the macabre; in short, very Mediterranean mysteries.” Tim Parks, author of Hotel Milano and Italian LifeIn an exclusive resort on the Tuscan coast, the wealthy elite gather at their luxurious second homes for Christmas. Amid this frosty holiday idyll, a husband and wife vanish from their heavily guarded villa, and the body of ...

Siena, one of Italy’s most beautiful cities, visited by all discerning travellers to Tuscany, is feverishly preparing for the Palio, a horse race dating back to the Middle Ages held every summer in the centre of the town, famously described by Rick Steves as "The World's Most Insane Horse Race". Milanese lawyer Enzo Maggione and his wife Valeria are unwittingly caught up in the maelstrom of plots, counterplots and bribes surrounding the race. They are even witnesses to the violent ...

Based on the true WWII story of a daring attempt to smuggle thousands through the Vatican and out of occupied Rome right under the noses of Nazi occupiers.A Washington Post and Irish Times Best Book of the YearFinalist for the 2024 Walter Scott PrizeSeptember 1943: German forces have Rome under their control. Gestapo boss Paul Hauptmann rules over the Eternal City with vicious efficiency. Hun...

The locals in the southern Italian town where he lives call him Signor Farfalla--Mr. Butterfly: for he is a discreet gentleman who paints rare butterflies. His life is inconspicuous--mornings spent brushing at a canvas, afternoons idling in the cafes, and evening talks with his friend the town priest over a glass of brandy.Yet there are other sides to this gentleman's life: Clara: the young student who moonlights in the town bordello. And another woman who arrives with $100,000 and ...

'Alive with a tang of lemons to set the senses zinging' The SpectatorFiction at its most charming - A Man Called Ove meets Andrea Camilleri, Auntie Poldi is this summer's most unlikely hero.Auntie Poldi can think of no finer place to wait for death than Sicily. All she asks is a sea view, fine wine (and plenty of it), and her family close around.When death instead takes her handsome young friend Valentino - and und...

Siena seems at first glance a typical Italian city: within its venerable medieval walls the citizens sport designer clothes, wield digital phones, and prize their dazzling local cuisine. But unlike neighboring Florence, Siena is still deeply rooted in ancient traditions—chiefly the spectacular Palio, in which seventeen independent societies known as contrade vie for bragging rights in an annual bareback horse race around the central piazza.Into this strange, closed world s...

An international bestseller and winner of Italy's prestigious Premio Bancarella prize—an intense psychological thriller in the vein of The Talented Mr. RipleyAs world-weary Lieutenant Chiti spends sleepless nights hunting for the serial rapist terrorizing his city, trainee lawyer Giorgio is befriended by dangerously charismatic Francesco. Slowly the innocent Giorgio is lured into a corrupt world of beautiful women and casual violence. Then one terrifying ni...

A Man Called Ove meets Inspector Montalbano, Auntie Poldi leaves no stone unturned in her quest for answers.Wine and murder - nothing is more likely to rouse Auntie Poldi's love of the chase.Still relishing the notoriety from her spectacular resolution of the Candela case, Poldi is alive to the faintest whiff of criminality.What to others might seem a series of misfortunes - the water supply cut off, a poisoned dog - is clearly, to...

A Munich ex-pat retires to Sicily where she uncovers romance and murder in this humorous mystery series debut."To the ranks of amateur sleuths, from Miss Marple to Jessica Fletcher, welcome Auntie Poldi." — Newsday"Break out the prosecco! There's a new detective in town—and she's sixty, sexy, wise, and utterly adorable." — People magazineOn her si...

This is a haunting, elegiac novel which captures the mood and atmosphere of Italy (and in particular Ferrara) in the last summers of the thirties, focusing on an aristocratic Jewish family moving imperceptibly towards its doom. Vittorio De Sica turned the book into a film in 1970, winning the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1974.