A mystery story, a comedy, and a riveting human drama rolled into one, from the bestselling author of MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL

Two orphaned children are on the run, hiding among the crumbling canals and misty alleyways of the city. Befriended by a gang of street children and their mysterious leader, the Thief Lord, they shelter in an old, disused cinema. On their trail is a bungling detective, obsessed with disguises and the health of his pet tortoises.

* Reissued in a new look, the breathtaking historical novel about love, beauty, the politics of sex and the power of loyalty set in Venice, by the author of SACRED HEARTS, featuring a fabulous courtesan and her dwarf

Presents the history of Venice from its origins to its eighteenth century fall.

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.

On a Venetian night shortly before Christmas, a man is killed in a scuffle in Campo San Stefano. The closest witnesses to the event are the tourists who had been browsing the man's wares before his death. Officially termed a venditore ambulante or extracomunitario, the dead man was working as a vu cumpra, one of the Black Africans purveying goods.

Commissario Brunetti's hopes of a refreshing holiday with his family are dashed when a body is found in Marghera so badly beaten that the face is unrecognizable. Brunetti searches in vain for someone who can identify the body. Then he receives a call promising some tantalizing information.

In a small village at the foot of the Italian Dolomites, the gardens of a deserted farmhouse have lain untouched for decades. But the new owner is summoned urgently to the house when his workmen disturb a macabre grave. Then a valuable signet ring is found, leading Commissario Guido Brunetti right to a family grieving for their abducted son.

When Commissario Brunetti is summoned to the hospital bedside of a senior paediatrician whose skull has been brutally fractured, he is confronted with more questions than answers. Three men burst into the doctor's apartment in the middle of the night, attacked him and took his 18-month-old son - but why?

When a lorry crashes on one of the treacherous hair-pin bends in the Italian Dolomites even Commissario Guido Brunetti of the Venice Questura is appalled when he learns of its terrible cargo. This is Donna Leon's fourth novel to feature Guido Brunetti.

When the body of a wealthy elderly woman is found murdered in her Venetian flat, it is clear to the police that the prime suspect is her Rumanian maid, who has disappeared. When the woman is approached by the border police as her train is leaving Italy, she makes a run for it and is killed as she crosses the tracks in front of an oncoming train.

Set in the world's most romantic city, this exhilarating memoir tells what it's like to risk it all for love.

A young cadet is found hanged, a presumed suicide, in Venice's elite military academy. As Brunetti investigates, he faces a wall of silence as the military protects its own, and civilians are unwilling to talk. Is this the natural reluctance of Italians to involve themselves with the authorities, or is Brunetti facing a conspiracy of silence?

John Ruskin wrote more than half a million words on Venice. This is an abridged version of his opus, which still contains the essence of his original work, for those who would appreciate Venice, architecture and Ruskin's fine writing.

Maria Testa, better known to Brunetti as the nun who once cared for his mother, turns up at the Commissario's door. Maria has left her nursing convent after the suspicious deaths of five patients. Is she creating fears to justify abandoning her vocation, or is there a more sinister scenario?

The new edition of Salley Vicker's sensational debut novel. 'Miss Garnet's Angel' is a voyage of discovery; a novel about Venice but also the rich story of the explosive possibilities of change in all of us at any time.

Venetian cop, Commissario Guido Brunetti, wonders whom he knows to bring pressure on a local government department, to investigate the lack of official building approval on his apartment. Brunetti's investigations take him into the unfamiliar areas of Venetian life - drug abuse and loan sharking.

For Commissario Guido Brunetti it begins with an early morning phone call. A sudden act of vandalism has just been committed in the chill Venetian dawn. But Brunetti soon discovers that the perpetrator is no petty criminal, for the culprit at the scene is none other than Paola Brunetti, his wife.

This work by German novelist, Heinrich Mann, is part of the BCP German Texts series, designed to meet the needs of the growing A Level and undergraduate market for texts in the German language. Each text comes with English notes and vocabulary, and with an introduction by an expert.

An evocation of Venice which uses vivid prose, humour and irony to present a personal portrait of an eccentric city.