A boy rides a bicycle down a dusty road. But in his mind, he envisions himself traveling at a speed beyond imagining, on a beam of light. This brilliant mind will one day offer up some of the most revolutionary ideas ever conceived. From a boy endlessly fascinated by the wonders around him, Albert Einstein ultimately grows into a man of genius recognized the world over for profoundly illuminating our understanding of the universe. Jennifer Berne and...

Venetian police commissioner Guido Brunetti and Inspector Vianello investigate the identity of a man found in a canal, his body damaged by the tides, carrying no wallet, and wearing only one shoe, and the reason why someone wanted him dead.

Book four of the bestselling Max Freeman mystery series: Max's investigation of a string of murders in south Florida leads him to the most shocking of suspects. After three young female bartenders were murdered in Miami and one went missing in Philadelphia, Freeman's ex-girlfriend Sherry Richards hires him to help with the case. Freeman grudgingly accepts the job, despite Sherry's insistence that a retired police officer who saved Freeman's life back...

After a wealthy elderly woman is found brutally murdered in her Venetian apartment, the police suspect her maid, who has disappeared and is heading for her native Romania. But when it becomes clear the maid could not have had time to kill the old woman before catching her train, Guido Brunetti decides-unofficially-to take on the case himself. As his wife reads about the seven deadly sins, Brunetti realizes that this is probably not a crime motivated...

The New York Times -bestselling series continues with the murder of an American soldier in Venice: "This is definitely an author to watch ( Kirkus Reviews ). Early one morning, Commissario Guido Brunetti of the Venice police confronts a grisly sight when the body of a young man is fished out of a fetid canal. All clues point to a violent mugging, but for Brunetti the motive of robbery seems altogether too convenient. When something discovered in the...

Brunetti struggles to find a connection between the death of a powerful attorney, who was supposedly murdered during an attempted robbery, and the alleged suicide of an accountant.

"One afternoon, Commissario Guido Brunetti gets a frantic call from the director of a prestigious Venetian library. Someone has stolen pages out of several rare books. After a round of questioning, the case seems clear: the culprit must be the man who requested the volumes, an American professor from a Kansas university. The only problem--the man fled the library earlier that day, and after checking his credentials, the American professor doesn't...

Issues of religion and politics take center stage in the household of Venice's Commissario Guido Brunetti when he and his wife go undercover to investigate the possibility that a charlatan posing as a preacher has begun developing an American-style Christian sect in the city, and Brunetti's attempts to investigate the death of a gypsy child found floating in a canal are hindered by sensitivities to multicultural issues.

On a patrol boat near Waterloo Bridge, police superintendent William Monk notices a young couple engaged in an intense discussion. Seconds later, the two plunge to their deaths in the icy waters of the Thames. Was it an accident, a suicide, or a murder? Ever the investigator, Monk learns that the woman, Mary Havilland, had planned to marry the fair-haired man who shared her fate. He also discovers that Mary's father had recently died in a supposed...

Benvenuto Cellini, master artisan of Renaissance Italy, once crafted a beautiful amulet prized for its unimaginable power-and untold menace. Now the quest to recover this legendary artifact depends upon one man: David Franco, a brilliant but skeptical young scholar at Chicago's world-renowned Newberry Library. What begins as a simple investigation spirals into a tale of dangerous intrigue, as Franco races from the châteaux of France to the palazzos...