As kids, Emily and Chess were inseparable. But by their 30s, their bond has been strained by the demands of their adult lives. So when Chess suggests a girls' trip to Italy, Emily jumps at the chance to reconnect with her best friend. Villa Aestas in Orvieto is a high-end holiday home now, but in 1974, it was known as Villa Rosato, and rented for the summer by a notorious rock star, Noel Gordon. In an attempt to reignite his creative spark, Noel invites...

Women's work is a matter of life and death. Nora Beady, the only female student at a prestigious medical school in Bologna, is a rarity. In the 19th century women are expected to remain at home and raise children, so her unconventional, indelicate ambitions to become a licensed surgeon offend the men around her. Everything changes when she allies herself with Magdalena Morenco, the sole female doctor on-staff. Together the two women develop new techniques...

"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...

Torn by her love for a handsome aristocrat, a young slave girl clings to her faith in the living God for deliverance from the forces of decadent Rome.

Caterina Pellegrini is a native Venetian, and like so many of them, she's had to leave home to pursue her career. With a doctorate in baroque opera from Vienna, she lands in Manchester, England. Manchester, however, is no Venice. When Caterina gets word of a position back home, she jumps at the opportunity. The job is an unusual one. After nearly three centuries, two locked trunks, believed to contain the papers of a baroque composer have been discovered....

They knew her as Rapha, the healer. What they didn't know was that beneath the veils was a woman they had both loved a woman who was supposed to be dead.

Beautiful and musical Judaean slave Thea attempts to survive and prosper in first century Rome despite a spiteful mistress, a broken love affair with a gladiator, and, most dangerous of all, an interested Emperor.

"In his many years as a commissario, Guido Brunetti has seen all manner of crime and known intuitively how to navigate the various pathways in his native city, Venice, to discover the person responsible. Now, in Transient Desires, the thirtieth novel in Donna Leon's masterful series, he faces a heinous crime committed outside his jurisdiction. He is drawn in innocently enough: two young American women have been badly injured in a boating accident,...

"Inspired by a real-life female spy, a WWII-set novel about a woman challenging convention and boundaries to help win a war, no matter the cost. "A gripping, fascinating read." --Kelly Rimmer, New York Times bestselling author of The Warsaw Orphan 1944, Rome. Newlywed Niki Novotná is recruited by a new American spy agency to establish a secret branch in Italy's capital. One of the OSS's few female operatives abroad and multilingual, she's tasked...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A heartfelt novel of the power of love across three generations of an Italian-American family, from the author of the Big Stone Gap series
“[An] epic of small-town life . . . A personal saga of American history and a romance woven together with warmth and good humor.”—The Oregonian
 
In the late 1800s, the residents of a small village in...