Novels in Florence #30: Murder of a Medici Princess

In Murder of a Medici Princess, Caroline Murphy illuminates the brilliant life and tragic death of Isabella de Medici, one of the brightest stars in the dazzling world of Renaissance Italy, the daughter of Duke Cosimo I, ruler of Florence and Tuscany.

Murphy is a superb storyteller, and her fast-paced narrative captures the intrigue, the scandal, the romantic affairs, and the violence that were commonplace in the Florentine court. She brings to life an extraordinary woman, fluent in five languages, a free-spirited patron of the arts, a daredevil, a practical joker, and a passionate lover. Isabella, in fact, conducted numerous affairs, including a ten-year relationship with the cousin of her violent and possessive husband. Her permissive lifestyle, however, came to an end upon the death of her father, who was succeeded by her disapproving older brother Francesco. Considering Isabella's ways to be licentious and a disgrace upon the family, he permitted her increasingly enraged husband to murder her in a remote Medici villa. To tell this dramatic story, Murphy draws on a vast trove of newly discovered and unpublished documents, ranging from Isabella's own letters, to the loose-tongued dispatches of ambassadors to Florence, to contemporary descriptions of the opulent parties and balls, salons and hunts in which Isabella and her associates participated. Murphy resurrects the exciting atmosphere of Renaissance Florence, weaving Isabella's beloved city into her story, evoking the intellectual and artistic community that thrived during her time. Palaces and gardens in the city become places of creativity and intrigue, sites of seduction, and grounds for betrayal.

Here then is a narrative of compelling and epic proportions, magnificent and alluring, decadent and ultimately tragic. (from jacket notes)

Murder of a Medici Princess, Caroline P. Murphy, Oxford University Press, 2009

Novels in Florence #29: April Blood: Florence and the Plot against the Medici

One of the world's leading historians of Renaissance Italy brings to life here the vibrant--and violent--society of fifteenth-century Florence. His disturbing narrative opens up an entire culture, revealing the dark side of Renaissance man and politician Lorenzo de' Medici.
On a Sunday in April 1478, assassins attacked Lorenzo and his brother as they attended Mass in the cathedral of Florence. Lorenzo scrambled to safety as Giuliano bled to death on the cathedral floor. April Blood moves outward in time and space from that murderous event, unfolding a story of tangled passions, ambition, treachery, and revenge. The conspiracy was led by one of the city's most noble clans, the Pazzi, financiers who feared and resented the Medici's swaggering new role as political bosses--but the web of intrigue spread through all of Italy. Bankers, mercenaries, the Duke of Urbino, the King of Naples, and Pope Sixtus IV entered secretly into the plot. Florence was plunged into a peninsular war, and Lorenzo was soon fighting for his own and his family's survival.
The failed assassination doomed the Pazzi. Medici revenge was swift and brutal--plotters were hanged or beheaded, innocents were hacked to pieces, and bodies were put out to dangle from the windows of the government palace. All remaining members of the larger Pazzi clan were forced to change their surname, and every public sign or symbol of the family was expunged or destroyed.
April Blood offers us a fresh portrait of Renaissance Florence, where dazzling artistic achievements went side by side with violence, craft, and bare-knuckle politics. At the center of the canvas is the figure of Lorenzo the Magnificent--poet, statesman, connoisseur, patron of the arts, and ruthless "boss of bosses." This extraordinarily vivid account of a turning point in the Italian Renaissance is Lauro Martines, former Professor of European History at the University of California, Los Angeles, is renowned for his books on the Italian Renaissance. The author of Power and Imagination: City-States in Renaissance Italy, and most recently of Strong Words: Writing and Social Strain in the Italian Renaissance, he reviews for The Times Literary Supplement and lives in London with his wife, novelist Julia O'Faolainund to become a lasting work of history. (from jacket notes)
April Blood: Florence and the Plot against the Medici, Lauro Martines, Oxford University Press, 2004

Novels in Florence #28: It Happened in Florence

I live here! This is my life!

Nita Tucker's four years in Florence are a lesson about how staying true to your dreams is really the only option. As editor-in-chief of The Florentine, the English language newspaper she set up with her husband and Italian partners, Nita's days in Florence were packed with interviewing politicians, princesses, designers and celebrities and accepting privileged invitations to palazzos, country estates, galleries and parties.

In between, Nita laughed and cried with her girlfriends over family, fashion, cultural differences and making a difference in their beloved Florence.

With the many highs came a few inevitable lows including Nita?s realization that it was her dream to live in Europe and not her husband and daughter?s - and that The Florentine was never going to pay her a living wage. It Happened in Florence is a story about living a life with no regrets, celebrating the discovery that those who love you most - will love you all the more for living a life without compromise. (from jacket notes)

It Happened in Florence, Nita Tucker, Createspace, 2011

Novels in Florence #27: The Memory Cathedral

The Memory Cathedral is the secret history of Leonardo da Vinci, adventurer, traveller, inventor, and lover of Lorenzo the Magnificent′s mistress.

Based on Leonardo′s own notebooks, this expansive, multi-layered novel is ostensibly about Leonardo′s flying machines.

But it is really a magical exploration of the man, his drives, his loves, his friends, and fabulous inventions. It takes place in the Florence of Lorenzo de Medici and in the fabled, mythical east. Indeed, there is real evidence that Leonardo travelled to Egypt and Persia under the protection of the Devatdar of Syria, Lieutenant of the Sacred Sultan of Babylon.

Imagine what would happen if Leonardo de Vinci had been given the chance to put his fabulous inventions to use - his bombs and machine guns and submarines and tanks and flying machines. Imagine Leonardo and a young Niccolo Machiavelli flying in a balloon over Egypt. Imagine Leonardo′s closest friend Sandro Botticelli being exorcised in Florence and riding through deserts with the Caliph of Egypt. Imagine living in the dangerous day to day world of the Renaissance and knowing intimately the greatest personages of the age.

That is the experience of reading The Memory Cathedral. (from jacket notes - Bantam Books)

The Memory Cathedral, Jack Dann, Bantam Books, 1996

Novels in Florence #26: Incognita

This is the only available edition of a brilliant novel by the leading Restoration dramatist and author of The Way of the World.
Masked balls, mistaken identity, and fanciful deceits run riot in this hilarious tale of love and intrigue by the master of the Restoration comedy.
Returning to Florence on the occasion of his eighteenth birthday, Aurelian - together with his sworn companion Hippolito - dons his disguise in anticipation of the famous Florentine ball. Once there, the two are soon separated, and each finds himself paired off with a beautiful - and masked - woman.
Whilst Aurelian yearns to learn the true identity of his 'love', Hippolito is mistaken for another and brazenly plays along with the conceit. Chaos abounds as masks are dropped, truth revealed, and, somehow, all ends happily. (from jacket notes - Hesperus Press)
William Congreve (1670-1729), the most celebrated of the Restoration comedy writers, was the son of an English officer living in Ireland, and was educated at Trinity, Dublin. His first play, The Old Bachelor, written at the age of twenty-three, was a great success. The Double Dealer, following almost immediately, brought forth the praise of Dryden, the autocrat of English letters. At the age of twenty-seven Congreve had gained a prestige scarcely less in importance than that of Dryden himself. Not only as a comic wit, but as a writer of noble tragedy was he esteemed.
In his praise it should be said that, for almost the first time in England, he brought to the service of the stage a painstaking art. He cared much about the way a sentence was built, about balance, and getting the right shade of meaning. His diction is exactly fitted for oral use; and his pictures of the world of wealth and fashion are diverting. Congreve is, perhaps, the only English writer who can really be compared with Molière.
Incognita, William Congreve, Hesperus Classics, 2003

Novels in Florence #25: The Arno Serpent

Florence is at war with Pisa. Leonardo is commissioned to divert the river cutting off Pisa from the sea and thereby protecting Florence. At this time the political and social climate in Florence is unfavorable to Leonardo and he is encouraged to accept the invitation of the French King to come to Milan.
The Signoria puts 2000 men to work on the river project.
When three workmen are discovered mutilated on the riverbank and a serpent with glowing eyes has been sited Leonardo is recalled from Milan to solve the mystery.
With the help of Niccolo da Pavia, Leonardo uses a device of his own to "snare the monster" but this disturbs another serpent of less imposing size but no less lethal.
To trap Leonardo Niccolo's wife, Donna Elenora is abducted by the Viper and held in a castle. A plan to rescue her includes the commedia dell'arte troupe I Comici Buffoni.
(from jacket notes - iUniverse Inc.)
A professional actor/director and student of history, George Herman won a McKight Foundation Award for his play A COMPANY OF WAYWARD SAINTS (Samuel French), authored many books featuring Leonardo da Vinci and was a national finalist in the Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Program.
The Arno Serpent, George Herman, iUniverse Inc., 2007

Novels in Florence #24: Lost Girls: Sex and Death in Renaissance Florence

In 1554, a group of idealistic laywomen founded a home for homeless and orphaned adolescent girls in one of the worst neighborhoods in Florence. Of the 526 girls who lived in the home during its fourteen-year tenure, only 202 left there alive.
Struck by the unusually high mortality rate, Nicholas Terpstra sets out to determine what killed the lost girls of the House of Compassion shelter (Casa della Pietà).
Reaching deep into the archives' letters, ledgers, and records from both inside and outside the home, he slowly pieces together the tragic story.
The Casa welcomed girls in bad health and with little future, hoping to save them from an almost certain life of poverty and drudgery. Yet this "safe" house was cruelly dangerous. Victims of Renaissance Florence's sexual politics, these young women were at the disposal of the city's elite men, who treated them as property meant for their personal pleasure.
With scholarly precision and journalistic style, Terpstra uncovers and chronicles a series of disturbing leads that point to possible reasons so many girls died: hints of routine abortions, basic medical care for sexually transmitted diseases, and appalling conditions in the textile factories where the girls worked.
Church authorities eventually took the Casa della Pietà away from the women who had founded it and moved it to a better part of Florence. Its sordid past was hidden, until now, in an official history that bore little resemblance to the orphanage's true origins. Terpstra's meticulous investigation not only uncovers the sad fate of the lost girls of the Casa della Pietà but also explores broader themes, including gender relations, public health, church politics, and the challenges girls and adolescent women faced in Renaissance Florence. (from jacket notes - John Hopkins U.P.)
Lost Girls: Sex and Death in Renaissance Florence, Nicholas Terpstra, John Hopkins University, 2010

Novels in Florence #23: Florence: A Delicate Case

David Leavitt brings the wonders and mysteries of Florence alive, illuminating why it is, and always has been, one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world.
The third in the critically-acclaimed Writer and the City Series-in which some of the world's finest novelists reveal the secrets of the cities they know best-Florence is a lively account of expatriate life in the 'city of the lily'.
Why has Florence always drawn so many English and American visitors? (At the turn of the century, the Anglo-American population numbered more than thirty thousand.) Why have men and women fleeing sex scandals traditionally settled here? What is it about Florence that has made it so fascinating-and so repellent-to artists and writers over the years?
Moving fleetly between present and past and exploring characters both real and fictional, Leavitt's narrative limns the history of the foreign colony from its origins in the middle of the nineteenth century until its demise under Mussolini, and considers the appeal of Florence to figures as diverse as Tchaikovsky, E.M. Forster, Ronald Firbank, and Mary McCarthy.
Lesser-known episodes in Florentine history-the moving of Michelangelo's David, and the construction of temporary bridges by black American soldiers in the wake of the Second World War-are contrasted with images of Florence today (its vast pizza parlors and tourist culture).
Leavitt also examines the city's portrayal in such novels and films as A Room with a View, The Portrait of a Lady and Tea with Mussolini. (from jacket notes - Bloomsbury Publishing)
Florence: A Delicate Case, David Leavitt, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2002

Novels in Florence #22: Suspicion

In the shadow of the "Monster of Florence," a serial murderer who has terrorized Italy for seventeen years, Laura Grimaldi sets her tense psychological thriller Suspicion—a noir mystery of a city transformed by fear, and of friendships and family ties twisted by uncertainty and dark speculation. Grimaldi, whose hardboiled mysteries of the 1950s earned her the title "Italy's queen of crime," turns here to the deeper, more elusive and disturbing questions that haunt human affairs.
For years Matilde, the widow of a prominent Florentine doctor, has lived alone with her eccentric middle-aged son, Enea. When the police pay a call, the balance between mother and son is shifted just subtly enough to make Matilde prey to suspicions and doubts that grow ever more corrosive, ever harder to conceal and more dangerous to reveal.
In the literary tradition of such mystery writers as Patricia Highsmith and Ruth Rendell, Grimaldi creates an atmosphere charged with suspense as the daily lives and routines of her characters, infected with suspicion, begin to rearrange themselves around a few frightening facts and infinite monstrous possibilities.
Matilde's efforts to decipher Enea's secretive movements and occupations appear perfectly sensible and defensible through Grimaldi's deft shifts between mother and son—and another, chillingly detached perspective on the gruesome murders. Grimaldi's readers will find themselves as subject to misinterpretation and doubt, to sympathies and suspicions as her Florentine characters, and spellbound until the book's final page.
from jacket notes - Terrace Books
Suspicion, Laura Grimaldi, Terrace Books, 2003

Novels in Florence #21: Romola

One of George Eliot's most ambitious and imaginative novels, Romola is set in Renaissance Florence during the turbulent years following the expulsion of the powerful Medici family during which the zealous religious reformer Savonarola rose to control the city.
At its heart is Romola, the devoted daughter of a blind scholar, married to the clever but ultimately treacherous Tito whose duplicity in both love and politics threatens to destroy everything she values, and she must break away to find her own path in life.
Described by Eliot as written with my best blood', the story of Romola's intellectual and spiritual awakening is a compelling portrayal of a Utopian heroine, played out against a turbulent historical backdrop.
George Eliot (1819-1880), is the author of Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Mariner (1861) and Middlemarch (1872). (from amazon.com)
Romola, George Eliot, Penguin Classics, 2010

Novels in Florence #20: Lament for Christabel

In an ancient Italian olive grove, the curtain rises on...Murder!
The late Piero Marini has been a successful, highly acclaimed composer, whose private life was a happily passionate muddle of wives, ex-wives, mistresses--and a single, cherished daughter, the mesmerizing Tina.
Andrew Quentin was at Casa Marini, outside Florence, to study the composer’s brilliant, unfinished “Christabel”, a work that resonated eerily with the composer’s own tumultuous existence.
Instead, Quentin stumbled upon a shocking scene that left Tina’s estranged husband dead, Tina haunted by virulent threats--and Andrew utterly in love with the terrified young widow...
On assignment in Italy, Jane Winfield began to sort out the featured players from the extras.
And from the Tuscan hills to England’s peaceful Lake District to a tiny Swiss retreat, Jane and Andrew sought to unravel a twenty-year-old mystery- as the visible strands inexorably tightened into a fatal finale! (jacket notes - Pocket Books)

Novels in Florence #19: The Lost Madonna

Thirty years after leaving Florence with a broken heart, Suzanne Cunningham is thrilled to finally be going back to teach art history.
But preparing for her course, she comes across something she never expected. A book reveals that a small but significant painting, Madonna and Child, was destroyed in the flood of 1966. But Suzanne knows this isn't true.
She knows, because with the help of her former lover, Stefano, she rescued it-after the infamous flood...
Now back in the magical city that once captured her heart, Suzanne is determined to solve the mystery of what happened to that priceless painting-and to the man who forever changed the course of her life... jacket notes - Berkley Books)
The Lost Madonna, Kelly Jones, Berkley Books, 2007

Novels in Florence #18: The Other David

Two Davids. Michelangelo's great statue and now a rare “lost” portrait of the same model. Was the painting the real thing...or merely the brushstroke-perfect invention of a super-forger?
It was art historian Andrea Perkins’ job to find out--and it seemed to be someone else’s job to get her out of the picture.
Permanently.
There were two hired killers stalking her through the cool marble halls and obscure alleyways of Florence. And less than one chance for Andrea to outwit an opponent more ruthless that the bloodiest Medici... (jacket notes - Thorndyke Press).
This is the first adventure of the art historian Andrea Perkins.
The Other David: A Novel of Suspense, Carolyn Coker, Thorndyke Press, 1984

Novels in Florence #17: The Drowning River

Meet Sandro Cellini, Florence's answer to Donna Leon's Guido Brunetti.
One wet November in Florence, the grieving widow of an eminent Jewish architect comes to visit Sandro Cellini, good husband, disgraced ex-policeman, and recently turned PI, to ask him to investigate her husband's suicide. Cellini takes her on out of sympathy, although this first case makes a downbeat start to his new career. There seems no doubt that Claudio Gentileschi, a Holocaust survivor and lifelong depressive found drowned on a bleak stretch of the River Arno, did take his own life, and initially Cellini imagines that his only duty is to support the widow through her time of mourning.
But as Cellini doggedly retraces the architect's last hours through the worst rains since the devastating floods of 1966, a young Englishwoman is found to have gone missing from the city's community of hard-drinking, high-living art students, and Sandro's search turns abruptly into something grimmer and more urgent than he could have imagined, as he uncovers a network of greed and corruption that is hidden under a veneer of tradition and refinement.
The Drowning River is a spot-on, atmospheric new mystery, the first in a series featuring Cellini. (jacket notes - Minotaur Books)
The Drowning River, Christobel Kent, Minotaur Books, 2010

Novels in Florence #16: The Stars Dispose

The Befanini family rules the kitchens of the de Medici and their allies, serving well by fortifying their patrons' reputations and influence with all the power that a brilliant meal can supply. Young Ginevra Befanini serves more directly as companion and confidante to Catherine de Medici, while Ginevra's brother Tommaso is learning his family's craft and enhancing it with his own ideas and talents. The political forces of Renaissance Florence pull and push at them; plague stalks them; and other alien forces move through the kitchens and the city, menacing Caterina and her friends.
Historically precise, culinarily evocative (at the very least, have some pan di campagna and olives on hand as you read), and fantastically inventive, Michaela Roessner's writing will sweep you into the mazelike streets of Florence and the ominous tension of sorcerous conflict. (from amazon.com)
The Stars Dispose, Michela Roessner, Tor Books, 1997

Novels in Florence #15: The Confessions of Catherine de Medici

(notes of the author from amazon.com)
I found Catherine de Medici to be both a perfect subject and enormous challenge for my next work of historical fiction. Though I’d known about her for years, I soon discovered during my research how little I had truly understood her. Few queens are as notorious as this woman who ruled France during the 16th century, renowned for her ruthlessness and accused of heinous crimes, including the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. Obscured by her own dark legend, Catherine lurks in the shadows of history as the perennial black widow, weaving intrigue in her Louvre palace apartments even as outside her window, Paris lies bathed in blood.
Catherine was born in a time of deep religious conflict, when the idealism of Europe’s early Renaissance had given way to the zealous Protestant Reformation. England, Germany, and the Low Countries embraced this new faith, while imperial Spain tenaciously combated the spread of what was seen as heresy. France found itself trapped between the tenets of the old faith and innovation of the new one--and the struggle that ensued is marked by its fervor and savagery. It is also dominated by the widowed queen-mother, Catherine de Medici.
When someone lives an eventful life in a tumultuous time, there’s always more to her story than history can tell us. Catherine de Medici is a figure of lurid speculation but she had dreams and aspirations; hopes and disillusions. Yet unlike Elizabeth I, who commands our respect with her virginal splendor; or Mary of Scots, who elicits sympathy for her romantic martyrdom, Catherine has not been allowed much compassion. We forget that in the end, like all of us, she was human.
This is the flesh-and-blood Catherine de Medici readers will meet in my book: the teenage Florentine heiress sent to France to marry a prince she does not love; the determined wife enduring years in the shadow of her husband’s icy mistress; the powerful regent fighting for her country; the fierce mother with her brood of children; and the bold queen whose alliance with an enigmatic rebel plunges her into a labyrinth of passion, betrayal, and murder. You will also meet the seer Nostradamus, who shares a prophetic gift with Catherine; the haughty duke of Guise, whose ambitions could bring about France’s ruin; and Catherine’s own children--weak Francois, married to Mary of Scots yet terrified of becoming king; fervent Charles, scarred by the fears of his childhood; gallant Henri, whose courage hides a secret; deformed Hercule, frantic to prove his worth; and beautiful Margot, whose thwarted desires will wreak terrible vengeance.
Unlike the legend, Catherine’s true story is full of drama, courage, triumph and tragedy; set in a complex era of glamorous spectacle and lethal deceit, where one woman faced the conflict between faith and survival and did everything she had to, to protect those she loved.
I hope that once you read her words, you will find her as fascinating as I did. I hope you enjoy The Confessions of Catherine de Medici.
The Confessions of Catherine De Medici, G.W. Gortner, Ballantine Books, 2010

Novels in Florence #14: Family Chronicle

Family Chronicle tells the story of two brothers: one leads a life of privilege, while the other survives as a struggling writer.
Pratolini’s brilliant prose reveals the depth of spiritual strength in these two men as they draw together once again and develop bonds of love and trust for one another.
“Family Chronicle” (“Cronaca Familiare”) has been critically and popularly recognized as among the most important Italian novels of the twentieth century.
Vasco Pratolini, one of Italy’s leading neo-realist novelists and screen writers, frames his tale against the backdrop of the urban poor of Florence, the rise of Fascism, and the disastrous effects of World War II. (jacket notes - Italica Press).
Family Chronicle, Vasco Pratolini (translation by Martha King), Italica Press, 2008

Novels in Florence #13: A Thread of Grace

Mary Doria Russell's extraordinary and complex historical novel, A Thread of Grace, is the kind of book that you will find yourself haunted by long after finishing the last page. It opens with a group of Jewish refugees being escorted to safe-keeping by Italian soldiers. After making the arduous journey over a steep mountain pass, they are welcomed into a small village with warm food and clean beds. They have barely laid their heads to rest when news is received that Benito Mussolini has just surrendered Italy to Hitler, putting them in danger yet again. This opening sequence is a grim foreshadowing of the heart-breaking journey these characters will experience in their struggle for survival.
The rich fictional narrative is woven through the factual military maneuvers and political games at the end of WW II, sharing a little-known story of a group of Italian citizens that sheltered more than 40,000 Jews from grueling work camp executions. Rather than the bleak and hopeless feeling that might be expected, the novel has the opposite effect; it reminds us that just as there will always be war, crime, and death, so too will there be good people who selflessly sacrifice themselves to ease the suffering of others. Perhaps best of all, Russell succinctly opens and closes her writing with short pieces that bookend the story with the force of a freight train. Her moving finale wraps up her narrative in the present day, with a death bed scene that's sure to rip the heart out of readers of every faith and ancestry. A note in the reader's guide tells us that Russell flipped a coin to determine the fate of some of the characters. This may be upsetting for many readers, particularly those used to Hollywood endings, but it does serve as a frank reminder of the arbitrary nature of war and death. (from amazon.com)
A Thread of Grace, Mary Doria Russell, Ballantine Books, 2005

Novels in Florence #12: Cupid and the Silent Goddess

The painting Allegory with Venus and Cupid has long fascinated visitors to London’s National Gallery, as well as the millions more who have seen it reproduced in books. It is one of the most beautiful paintings of the nude ever made.
In 1544, Duke Cosimo de’ Medici of Florence commissioned the artist Bronzino to create the painting to be sent as a diplomatic gift to King François I of France.
As well as the academic mystery of what the strange figures in the painting represent, there is a human mystery: who were the models in the Florence of 1544 who posed for the gods and strange creatures?
Alan Fisk’s Cupid and the Silent Goddess imagines how the creation of this painting might have touched the lives of everyone who was involved with it: Bronzino’s apprentice Giuseppe, the mute and mysterious Angelina who is forced to model for Venus, the brutal sculptor Baccio Bandinelli and his son, and the good-hearted nun Sister Benedicta and her friend the old English priest Father Fleccia, both secret practitioners of alchemy.
As the painting takes shape, it causes episodes of fear and cruelty, but the ending lies perhaps in the gift of Venus.
'A witty and entertaining romp set in the seedy world of Italian Renaissance artists. Award-winning historical novelist Elizabeth Chadwick (The Falcons of Montabard, The Winter Mantle).
'Alan Fisk, in his book Cupid and the Silent Goddess, captures the atmosphere of sixteenth-century Florence and the world of the artists excellently. This is a fascinating imaginative reconstruction of the events during the painting of Allegory with Venus and Cupid.' Marina Oliver, author of many historical novels and of Writing Historical Fiction. (from jacket notes - Twenty First Century Publisher).
Cupid and the Silent Goddess, Alan Fisk, Twenty First Century Publisher, 2003

Novels in Florence # 11: The Dante Game

Sleuthing Harvard Professor Homer Kelly has come to Italy to teach at the struggling American School for Florentine Studies.
What starts innocently as "The Dante Game" takes a sinister turn when the schools Italian maid and her lover are found--quite dead--on the schools grounds.
Then the schools most talented (and ravishingly beautiful) student disappears.
Meanwhile, in another corner of Florence, Signor Bindo, a highly respected banker, is gnashing his teeth over His Holiness's successful antidrug campaign, which is ruining his tidy heroin business. It isn't long before he decides to take matters into his own hands.
Homer soon finds himself embroiled in a mystery as complex as Dante's divine poem itself -one that culminates in a hair- raising papal visit to Florence's spectacular duomo. (from jacket notes - Penguin Books)

Novels in Florence #10: The Prince

“Machiavelli can still engage our attention with remarkable immediacy, and this cannot be explained solely by the appeal of his ironic observations on human behaviour.
Perhaps the most important thing is the way he can compel us to reflect on our own priorities and the reasoning behind them; it is this intrusion into our own defenses that makes reading him an intriguing experience. As a scientific exponent of the political art Machiavelli may have had few followers; it is as a provocative rhetorician that he has had his real impact on history.” (from the Introduction by Dominic Baker-Smith).
Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) was born in Florence. He served the Florentine republic as a secretary and second chancellor, but was expelled from public life when the Medici family returned to power in 1512. His most famous work, The Prince, was written in an attempt to gain favour with the Medicis and return to politics.

Novels in Florence #9: Hannibal

Horror lit's head chef Harris serves up another course in his Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter trilogy, and it's a pièce de résistance for those with strong stomachs. In the first book, Red Dragon (filmed as Manhunter), Hannibal diabolically helps the FBI track a fascinating serial killer. (Takes one to know one.) In The Silence of the Lambs, he advises fledgling FBI manhunter Clarice Starling, then makes a bloody, brilliant escape.
Years later, posing as scholarly Dr. Fell, curator of a grand family's palazzo, Hannibal lives the good life in Florence, playing lovely tunes by serial killer/composer Henry VIII and killing hardly anyone himself. Clarice is unluckier: in the novel's action-film-like opening scene, she survives an FBI shootout gone wrong, and her nemesis, Paul Krendler, makes her the fall guy. Clarice is suspended, so, unfortunately, the first cop who stumbles on Hannibal is an Italian named Pazzi, who takes after his ancestors, greedy betrayers depicted in Dante's Inferno.
Pazzi is on the take from a character as scary as Hannibal: Mason Verger. When Verger was a young man busted for raping children, his vast wealth saved him from jail. All he needed was psychotherapy--with Dr. Lecter. Thanks to the treatment, Verger is now on a respirator, paralyzed except for one crablike hand, watching his enormous, brutal moray eel swim figure eights and devour fish. His obsession is to feed Lecter to some other brutal pets.
What happens when the Italian cop gets alone with Hannibal? How does Clarice's reunion with Lecter go from macabre to worse? Suffice it to say that the plot is Harris's weirdest, but it still has his signature mastery of realistic detail. There are flaws: Hannibal's madness gets a motive, which is creepy but lessens his mystery. If you want an exact duplicate of The Silence of the Lambs's Clarice/Hannibal duel, you'll miss what's cool about this book--that Hannibal is actually upstaged at points by other monsters. And if you think it's all unprecedentedly horrible, you're right. But note that the horrors are described with exquisite taste. Harris's secret recipe for success is restraint. (from amazon.com)

Novels in Florence #8: The Enchantress of Florence

Trying to describe a Salman Rushdie novel is like trying to describe music to someone who has never heard it--you can fumble with a plot summary but you won't be able to convey the wonder of his dazzling prose or the imaginative complexity of his vision. At its heart, The Enchantress of Florence is about the power of story--whether it is the imagined life of a Mughal queen, or the devastating secret held by a silver-tongued Florentine. Make no mistake, it is Rushdie who is the true "enchanter" of this story, conjuring readers into his gilded fairy tale from the very first sentence: "In the day's last light the glowing lake below the palace-city looked like a sea of molten gold."
At once bawdy, gorgeous, gory, and hilarious, The Enchantress of Florence is a study in contradiction, highlighted in its barbarian philosopher-king who detests his bloodthirsty heritage even while he carries it out. Full of rich sentences running nearly the length of a page, Rushdie's 10th novel blends fact and fable into a challenging but satisfying read. (from amazon.com)
The Enchantress of Florence, Salman Rushdie, Random House, 2008

Novels in Florence #7: A Room with a View

E.M. Forster's brilliant comedy of manners shines a gently ironic light on the attitudes and customs of the British middle class at the beginning of the 20th century.
When Lucy Honeychurch, visiting Italy, mentions the lack of a view from her room, George Emerson and his father offer to swap.
But Lucy's suspicions that the Emersons are the wrong sort of people seem confirmed when George impulsively kisses her during a picnic in the Tuscan countryside. Soon, however, thoughts of that kiss have Lucy questioning her engagement to boorish, if utterly acceptable, Cecil Vyse.
All in all, the situation presents quite a muddle for a young woman who wishes to be absolutely truthful—even when she's lying to herself about the most important aspects of life and love. (from jacket notes - Penguin Classics.)
A Room with a View, E. M. Forster, Barnes and Nobles Classics, 2009

Novels in Florence #6: The Birth of Venus

Sarah Dunant's gorgeous and mesmerizing novel, Birth of Venus, draws readers into a turbulent 15th-century Florence, a time when the lavish city, steeped in years of Medici family luxury, is suddenly besieged by plague, threat of invasion, and the righteous wrath of a fundamentalist monk. Dunant masterfully blends fact and fiction, seamlessly interweaving Florentine history with the coming-of-age story of a spirited 14-year-old girl. As Florence struggles in Savonarola's grip, a serial killer stalks the streets, the French invaders creep closer, and young Alessandra Cecchi must surrender her "childish" dreams and navigate her way into womanhood. Readers are quickly seduced by the simplicity of her unconventional passions that are more artistic than domestic:
Dancing is one of the many things I should be good at that I am not. Unlike my sister. Plautilla can move across the floor like water and sing a stave of music like a song bird, while I, who can translate both Latin and Greek faster than she or my brothers can read it, have club feet on the dance floor and a voice like a crow. Though I swear if I were to paint the scale I could do it in a flash: shining gold leaf for the top notes falling through ochres and reds into hot purple and deepest blue.Alessandra's story, though central, is only one part of this multi-faceted and complex historical novel. Dunant paints a fascinating array of women onto her dark canvas, each representing the various fates of early Renaissance women: Alessandra's lovely (if simple) sister Plautilla is interested only in marrying rich and presiding over a household; the brave Erila, Alessandra's North African servant (and willing accomplice) has such a frank understanding of the limitations of her sex that she often escapes them; and Signora Cecchi, Alessandra's beautiful but weary mother tries to encourage yet temper the passions of her wayward daughter.
A luminous and lush novel, The Birth of Venus, at its heart, is a mysterious and sensual story with razor-sharp teeth. Like Alessandra, Dunant has a painter's eye--her writing is rich and evocative, luxuriating in colors and textures of the city, the people, and the art of 15th-century Florence. (from amazon.com)
The Birth of Venus, Sarah Dunant, Random House, 2004

Novels in Florence #5: A Florentine Death

Chief Superintendent Michele Ferrara knows that the beautiful surface of his adopted city, Florence, hides dark undercurrents. When called in to investigate a series of brutal and apparently random murders, his intuition is confirmed.
Distrusted by his superiors and pilloried by the media, Ferrara finds time running out as the questions pile up.
Is there a connection between the murders and the threatening letters he has received? Are his old enemies, the Calabrian Mafia, involved? And what part is played by a beautiful young woman facing a heart-rending decision, a priest troubled by a secret from his past, and an American journalist fascinated by the darker side of life?
Ferrara confronts the murky underbelly of Florence in an investigation that will put not only his career but also his life on the line. (from amazon.com)
A Florentine Death, Michele Giuttari, Abacus, 2008

Novels in Florence #4: The Monster of Florence

When author Douglas Preston moved his family to Florence he never expected he would soon become obsessed and entwined in a horrific crime story whose true-life details rivaled the plots of his own bestselling thrillers. While researching his next book, Preston met Mario Spezi, an Italian journalist who told him about the Monster of Florence, Italy's answer to Jack the Ripper, a terror who stalked lovers' lanes in the Italian countryside. The killer would strike at the most intimate time, leaving mutilated corpses in his bloody wake over a period from 1968 to 1985. One of these crimes had taken place in an olive grove on the property of Preston's new home. That was enough for him to join "Monsterologist" Spezi on a quest to name the killer, or killers, and bring closure to these unsolved crimes. Local theories and accusations flourished: the killer was a cuckolded husband; a local aristocrat; a physician or butcher, someone well-versed with knives; a satanic cult. Thomas Harris even dipped into "Monster" lore for some of Hannibal Lecter's more Grand Guignol moments in Hannibal. Add to this a paranoid police force more concerned with saving face and naming a suspect (any suspect) than with assessing the often conflicting evidence on hand, and an unbelievable twist that finds both authors charged with obstructing justice, with Spezi jailed on suspicion of being the Monster himself. The Monster of Florence is split into two sections: the first half is Spezi's story, with the latter bringing in Preston's updated involvement on the case. Together these two parts create a dark and fascinating descent into a landscape of horror. (from amazon.com)
The Monster of Florence, Douglas Preston & Mario Spezi, Grand Central Publ., 2008

Novels in Florence #3: The Sixteen Pleasures

In 1966, 29-year-old Margot Harrington heads off to Florence, intent on doing her bit to protect its precious books from the great floods--and equally intent on adventure. Serendipity, in the shape of the man she'll fall in love with, leads her to an abbey run by the most knowing of abbesses and work on its library begins. One day a nun comes upon a shockingly pornographic volume, bound with a prayer book. It turns out to be Pietro Aretino's lost erotic sonnets, accompanied by some rather anatomical engravings. Since the pope had ordered all copies of the Sixteen Pleasures burned, it could be worth a fortune and keep the convent autonomous. The abbess asks Margot to take care of the book and check into its worth: "We have to be cunning as serpents and innocent as doves," she warns.
Soon our heroine finds her identity increasingly "tangled up" with the volume and with Dottor Postiglione, a man with an instinct for happiness--but also one for self-preservation. Margot enjoys the secrecy and the craft (the chapters in which she rebinds the folios are among the book's finest). Much of the book's pleasure stems from Robert Hellenga 's easy knowledge, which extends to Italian complexities. Where else would you learn that, in cases of impotence, legal depositions are insufficient: "Modern couples often take the precaution of sending postcards to each other from the time of their engagement, leaving the message space blank so that it can be filled in later if the couple wishes to establish grounds for an annulment." Luckily, however, there are also shops that sell old postcards, "along with the appropriate writing instruments and inks." Through The Sixteen Pleasures is initially in the tradition of American innocent goes abroad to encounter European experience, Hellenga's depth (and lightness) of characterization and description lift it high above its genre. And what better book than one about loving and loving books? (from amazon.com)
Sixteen Pleasures, Roberto Hellenga, Delta, 1995

Novels in Florence #2: The Agony and The Ecstasy

Celebrating the 500th anniversary of Michelangelo's David, New American Library releases a special edition of Irving Stone's classic biographical novel-in which both the artist and the man are brought to life in full. A masterpiece in its own right, this novel offers a compelling portrait of Michelangelo's dangerous, impassioned loves, and the God-driven fury from which he wrested the greatest art the world has ever known.
Irving Stone was born in San Francisco on July 14, 1903. He wrote several books in a genre that he coined the "biographical novel," which recounted the lives of well-known historical figures. In these novels, Stone interspersed biography with fictional narrative on the psychology and private lives of his subjects. He also wrote biographies of Clarence Darrow and Earl Warren, and short biographies of men who lost presidential elections. He died on August 26, 1989. (from amazon.com)
The Agony and The Ecstasy, Irving Stone, New American Library, 2004

Novels in Florence #1: The Divine Comedy

The Divine Comedy (Italian: La Divina Commedia) is an epic poem written by Dante Alighieri between 1308 and his death in 1321.
It is widely considered the preminent work of Italian literature, and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature. The poem's imaginative and allegorical vision of the Christian afterlife is a culmination of the medieval world-view as it had developed in the Western Church. It helped establish the Tuscan dialect in which it is written as the Italian standard.
It is divided into three parts, the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. On the surface the poem describes Dante's travels through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven; but at a deeper level it represents allegorically the soul's journey towards God.
At this deeper level, Dante draws on medieval Christian theology and philosophy, especially the teachings of Thomas Aquinas. At the surface level, the poem is understood to be fictional.(from Amazon.com)
The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri (translated by John Ciardi), Signet, 1955