"Venice, 1742. Tito Amato has regained his zest for performing and is once again singing lead roles at the Teatro San Marco. On opening night, the famous castrato has the entire audience entranced--except for one box with its scarlet curtains stubbornly drawn. Annoyed at being ignored, Tito aims the full force of his golden throat at the fourth-tier box. He is astounded when the curtains part and a woman tumbles over the railing. The victim is Zulietta...

Venice, 1510. Maria Bartolini wants nothing more than to carry on her father's legacy as a master gilder. Instead, her father has sent her away from the only home she's ever known to train as an apprentice to Master Trevisan, a renowned painter.

Escaping the sack of Rome in 1527, with their stomachs churning on the jewels they have swallowed, the courtesan Fiammetta and her dwarf companion, Bucino, head for Venice. Yet as their fortunes rise, this perfect partnership comes under threat, from the searing passion of a lover who wants more than his allotted nights to the attentions of an admiring Turk in search of human novelties for his sultan's court. But Fiammetta and Bucino's greatest challenge...

Long ago in Venice, Italy, a young orphan named Candida copies music each night for the orchestra of orphans who play for famed composer Vivaldi, and her imaginings find their way into one of his concertos.

Gabriella Mondini is a rarity in 16th century Venice: a woman who practices medicine. Her father, a renowned physician, has provided her entree to this all male profession, and inspired in her a shared mission to understand the secrets of the human body. Then her father disappears and Gabriella faces a crisis: she is no longer permitted to treat her patients, women who need her desperately, without her father's patronage. She sets out across Europe...

In 1715 Italy, eight-year-old Anna Maria Lombardini arrives at a Venice orphanage with little but the special violin her father made for her, but when her teacher, Antonio Vivaldi, favors her over a fellow student, the beloved instrument winds up in a canal. Includes glossary and historical note.

In the early seventeenth century, young Venetian Filippo Veroneo travels from Venice to Afghanistan to rescue his imprisoned father, Geronimo, and stops in India to raise the ransom by selling his father's beautiful diamond to the ruler Shah Jehan, who later uses the stone as the model for the Taj Mahal.

"Cass's fiance Luca is arrested for heresy and Cass must travel to Florence to uncover the mystery of the Order of the Eternal Rose and save Luca's life."--