Kirjahaku

Venice, 1468. Wendelin von Speyer has just arrived from Germany with the foundations of a cultural revolution: Gutenberg's movable type. Together with the young editor Bruno Uguccione and the seductive scribe Felice Feliciano, he starts the city's first printing press. While Bruno and Felice become entwined in an obsessive love triangle with a beautiful Dalmatian woman named Sosia, Wendelin tempts the fates by publishing the first edition of the erotic Roman poems of Catullus -- a move that will enrage the church, scandalize the city, and change all of their lives forever.The Floating Book is a ravishing novel of letters and lust, intrigue and betrayal -- a chillingly beautiful debut that few readers will soon forget.

The turbulent love affair of Venetian actress Mimosina Docezza and Valentine Greatrakes, leader of London's medical underworld, is set against the backdrop of eighteenth-century Venice and London and reveals the remarkable health remedies of the era. By the author of The Floating Book. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.

The book of human skin is a large volume with many pages of villainy writ upon it. There are people who are a disease, you know.13 May, 1784, Venice: Minguillo Fasan, heir to the decaying, gothic Palazzo Espagnol, is born. Yet Minguillo is no ordinary child: he is strange, devious and all those who come near him are fearful. Twelve years later Minguillo is faced with an unexpected threat to his inheritance: a newborn sister, Marcella. His untempered jealousy will condemn his sister to a series of fates as a cripple, a madwoman and a nun. But in his insatiable quest to destroy her, he may have underestimated his sister's ferocious determination, and her unlikely allies who will go to extraordinary lengths to save her...

It is the age of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, when Europe burns with a passion for long, flowing locks. And when seven Irish sisters, penniless and fatherless, grow up with hair cascading down their backs, to their ankles, and beyond, men are not slow to recognise their potential. It begins with a singing and dancing septet, but this is not what fills the seats: it is the torrents of hair they let loose at the end of each show. Their hair is a rich offering and will take the sisters out of poverty, through the dance halls of Ireland, to the salons of Dublin and the palazzi of Venice. It will bring them suitors and obsessive admirers, it will bring some of them love, and each of them loss. For their past trails behind the sisters like the tresses on their heads and their fame and fortune will come at a terrible price...

'So at fifteen, spread belly-down upon the floor, a black sheet hunched over me and a candle at my foot and head, my lips pressed on stone, litanies in my ears as the priest broke and entered my shocked fist to slide the ring on my finger, I promised to take no other husband than Christ. I almost meant it. In that heady moment the vow seemed no great sacrifice: I'd never known a man, but I had tasted chocolate.'One unforgettable night in 1785, in a theatre in Drury Lane, the heady alchemy of love and murder suddenly fuses the lives of Mimosina Dolcezza, a Venetian actress, and Valentine Greatrakes, prince of London's medical underworld.The Remedy is a ravishing love story that seamlessly weaves fiction with historical fact in rich and details prose.

When I think of Venice as she was in 1782, I think of a hundred thousand souls all devoted to pleasure. Souls like that become insubstantial and faintly luminous. You see, we were in the phosphorescent stage of decay...Richly imagined and as irresistible as its magical setting, Carnevale evokes the three great loves of the painter Cecilia Cornaro: Casanova, Byron and La Serenissima herself.

Venice, 1468. Sosia Simeon, a free-spirited sensualist, is the lover of many men in the fabled city, though married to one she despises. On the edge of the Grand Canal, Wendelin von Speyer sets up the first printing press in Venice and looks for the book that will make his fortune. When he tempts fate by publishing Catullus, the poet whose desperate and unrequited love inspired the most tender and erotic poems of antiquity, a scandal is set in motion that will change all their lives forever.

It's the beginning of the 20th century; the age of scientific progress. But for Venice the future looks bleak. A conference of scientists assembles to address the problems, among whose delegates are the parents of twelve-year-old Teodora. Within days of her arrival, she is subsumed into the secret life of Venice: a world in which salty-tongued mermaids run subversive printing presses, ghosts good and bad patrol the streets and librarians turn fluidly into cats. A battle against forces determined to destroy the city once and for all quickly ensues. Only Teo, the undrowned child who survived a tragic accident as a baby, can go 'between the linings' to subvert evil and restore order.

A brand new exquisitely imagined historical fantasy novel set on the canals of Venice from award-winning author, Michelle Lovric for ages 9+Venice in 1740, a serene and lovely city.But look beneath the surface . . . step off the edge of what you think you know . . .Young orphan Lily has grown up in a glum, prison-like convent. Her only freedom is walking the beautiful streets of Venice, dreaming of escape...of a family...of being loved.Then someone tries to steal the bones of Venice's beloved Saint Lucy. Without her protection, the city's vibrant colours fade to grey. And soon, the Venetians start to turn on one another.If Lily can't find a way to save Saint Lucy, Venice - the only home she's ever known - will descend into darkness...forever.A magical adventure set amongst mysterious canals and filled with monstrous eels, moody mermaids and menacing curses.

Christmas began with a good but harassed woman giving birth in difficult domestic circumstances. Somewhere between then and now the circumstances have changed, but for women today Christmas is still a time of joys garnered against the odds. We have moved on from stables and mangers to supermarkets and microwaves, and palm fronds, shepherds and lambs have given way to a fat red-suited man, a spangled conifer and well-stuffed stockings. In this anthology reflecting the experiences of more than fifty women at Christmas, Jenny Eclair rubs shoulders with Agatha Christie, Laurie Graham, Nancy Mitford, Sue Townsend, Stella Gibbons, Mrs Beeton, Clare Boylan and many others. Curl up with a tantalizing volume that gives full reign to the seditious humour, peculiar discomforts and exquisite social tortures of the season.