Commissario Guido Brunetti of the Venice Questura is shocked to hear that his friend Brett Lynch, lover of La Scala diva Flavia Petrelli, has been savagely beaten. Then a man's body is found and a terrible confrontation awaits Brett in the Capra family palazzo.

A rich American art-collector and his daughter Maggie buy in for themselves and to their greater glory a beautiful young wife and a noble husband. They do not know that Charlotte and Prince Amerigo were formerly lovers, nor that on the eve of the Prince's marriage they had discovered, in a Bloomsbury antique shop, a golden bowl with a secret flaw. When the golden bowl is broken, Maggie must ...

Basil Ransom, a young Mississippi lawyer arrives to Boston in search of a career. Through his cousin, Olive Chancellor, Ransom comes to meet Verena, the beautiful daughter of a charlatan faith-healer. Olive hopes to win the girl over to the feminist cause, Ransom is attracted to her looks, and a battle for possession of the girl begins.