Mangus the Magician and his thirteen-year-old servant, Fabrizio, are commanded to go to Venice, on pain of death, to find a book by Friar Luca Pacioli which reportedly contains a magical means of making money; but Venice is a strange and dangerous city, and someone else is also after the book--then Mangus is arrested, and taken to the prison, and Fabrizio and Bianca, an orphan he has met, must find a way to secure the book, save Magnus, and themselves....

The ferocious rise of the Borgia family in Rome has taken the country by surprise, as Pope Alexander VI Rodrigo Borgia openly wields his illegitimate children as dynastic weapons: His son Cesare, the arrogant, sadistic leader of a victorious mercenary army, and his scandal-soaked daughter, Lucrezia, a pawn in the marriage game. In Florence, a city once celebrated for her artistic wealth and learning, the people lament what has been lost after the...

"International bestselling author Guy Gavriel Kay's latest work is set in a world evoking early Renaissance Italy and offers an extraordinary cast of characters whose lives come together through destiny, love, and ambition. In a chamber overlooking the nighttime waterways of a maritime city, a man looks back on his youth and the people who shaped his life. Danio Cerra's intelligence won him entry to a renowned school even though he was only the son...