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It’s Venice, 1600. A dangerous place for free-thinkers and gamblers alike and Choradino da Mosto is both. Once the student of Giordano Bruno – newly tried and executed in Rome – Choradino is already being watched. When he is finally arrested he is offered a harsh choice: to remain in gaol or become a spy for the Republic. All eyes are on England, where an ageing Elizabeth has yet to name her successor. The Venetian authorities have intercepted coded messages from the Queen’s magician, John Dee. They know Dee is chasing a mysterious manuscript – rumoured to have been brought back from Macedonia centuries before by Marco Polo. Choradino is charged with finding – and destroying – the heretical text before it falls into the hands of the Protestants. Choradino has no choice but to follow his orders. But as he joins a ship bound for Korcula, he discovers another cipher running beneath Dee’s code. And the whisper of a secret which could strike at the very heart of the English court..

In a city-state known for magnificence, where love affairs and conspiracies play out amidst brilliant painters, poets and musicians, the powerful and ambitious Alfonso d’Este, duke of Ferrara, takes a new bride. Half of Europe is certain he murdered his first wife, Lucrezia, the luminous child of the Medici. But no one dares accuse him, and no one has proof-least of all his second duchess, the far less beautiful but delightfully clever Barbara of Austria.

At first determined to ignore the rumors about her new husband, Barbara embraces the pleasures of the Ferrarese court. Yet wherever she turns she hears whispers of the first duchess’s wayward life and mysterious death. Barbara asks questions-a dangerous mistake for a duchess of Ferrara. Suddenly, to save her own life, Barbara has no choice but to risk the duke’s terrifying displeasure and discover the truth of Lucrezia’s death-or she will share her fate.

Violante isn’t supposed to be here, in one of the grandest courts of Renaissance Italy. She isn’t supposed to be a lady-in-waiting to the beautiful Lucrezia Borgia. But the same secretive politics that pushed Lucrezia’s father to the Vatican have landed Violante deep in a lavish landscape of passion and ambition.

Violante discovers a Lucrezia unknown to those who see only a scheming harlot, and all the whispers about her brother, Cesare Borgia, never revealed the soul of the man who dances close with Violante.

But those who enter the House of Borgia are never quite the same when they leave-if they leave at all. Violante’s place in history will test her heart and leave her the guardian of dangerous secrets she must carry to the grave.

In January 1692, the unordained Rev. George Burroughs and his closest friend, Capt. Peter White, are living in the remote settlement of Wells, in Maine, where Burroughs rescues young Mary Cheever after a local Indian massacre. Meanwhile, in Salem, Mass., Burroughs’s former parish, two girls on a winter’s night whip themselves into a frenzy that sends the whole of Salem into superstition and hysteria resulting in the witch examinations and trials. Burroughs, now married to Mary, is accused as the “leader of witches,” arrested, and taken in irons to Salem. Mary and Peter travel to Salem, where their energetic efforts to prove his innocence fail, including Mary’s meeting with the priggish, lecherous religious figure Cotton Mather.

Eleven-year-old Tilly Martin is dragged from her suburban bedroom. Her mother, Cora, pleads for mercy but the kidnappers are clear: if they don’t get their $5 million back in five days, Tilly dies. If anyone contacts police, Tilly dies.

Journalist Jack Gannon’s estranged sister, Cora, disappeared without a trace decades ago. Now she is frantically reaching out to him for help. Cora tells him about the shameful mistakes she’s made – but she guards the one secret that may be keeping her daughter alive.

A twenty-year-old assassin, haunted by the faces of the people he’s executed, seeks absolution as he sets out to commit his last murders as a hired killer.

In the U.S. and Mexico, police and the press go flat out on Tilly’s case. But as Gannon digs deeper into his anguished sister’s past, the hours tick down on his niece’s life and he faces losing a fragment of his rediscovered family forever.

Vanessa ‘Michael’ Munroe deals in information – expensive information – working for corporations, heads of state, private clients, and anyone else who can pay for her unique brand of expertise. Born to missionary parents in lawless central Africa, Munroe took up with an infamous gunrunner and his mercenary crew when she was just fourteen. As his protégé, she earned the respect of the jungle’s most dangerous men, cultivating her own reputation for years until something sent her running. After almost a decade building a new life and lucrative career from her home base in Dallas, she’s never looked back.

Until now.

A Texas oil billionaire has hired her to find his daughter who vanished in Africa four years ago. It’s not her usual line of work, but she can’t resist the challenge. Pulled deep into the mystery of the missing girl, Munroe finds herself back in the lands of her childhood, betrayed, cut off from civilization, and left for dead. If she has any hope of escaping the jungle and the demons that drive her, she must come face-to-face with the past that she’s tried for so long to forget.

From her earliest days, Genevieve Gravois has known one fact above all: Francis I, king of France, is her enemy. Raised by her embittered aunt after her parents’ deaths, Genevieve has been schooled in things no woman should know: how to decipher codes, how to use a dagger and a bow, and how to kill. For Henry VIII has a destiny in mind for the young girl–as his most powerful and dangerous spy. When the time is ripe, Genevieve enters the magnificent world of the French court. With grace to match her ambition, she becomes maid of honor to Anne de Pisseleau, King Francis’s mistress. Yet neither the court–which teems with artistry and enlightenment as well as intrigue–nor Francis himself are at all what Genevieve expected. And with her mission, her life, and the fate of two kingdoms at stake, she will be forced to make deadly decisions about where her heart and her ultimate loyalties lie

A rollicking, fast-paced historical novel set against the richness and squalor of sixteenth-century Venice and Malta.

Hannah ha-Levi, a midwife in the Jewish ghetto, is known throughout Venice for her skill in midwifery. When a Christian count appears at Hannah’s door imploring her to attend his labouring wife who is near death, Hannah’s compassion is tested. Not only is it illegal for Jews to render medical treatment to Christians, it’s also punishable by torture … and death. But Hannah cannot turn down the money. With such a handsome sum, she can save her own husband, Isaac, who was captured at sea and taken to Malta as a slave of the Knights of St. John. Aided by her “birthing spoons” — rudimentary forceps she invented to help with difficult births — will Hannah be able to save mother and child? And if she can, will she also be able to save herself?

Woven through Hannah’s travails is the story of Isaac’s life as a captive slave in Malta. Fearing that his wife has perished in the plague, he pins his hopes of returning home to Hannah on his talent for writing love letters that melt even the hardest of hearts.

Home for a Spell by Madelyn Alt As the newest witch in Indiana, Maggie O’Neill already has plenty to deal with. So being hobbled by a broken leg doesn’t help. Neither does the fact that her best friend and upstairs neighbor is getting ready to tie the knot with her own boyfriend and move away. This leads Maggie to wonder if it isn’t time to find herself a new pad.

But when she finds a place, Maggie’s dream of new digs turns into a nightmare: the apartment manager is found dead before she can even sign the lease. And Maggie finds herself not only searching for a new home- but for a frightfully clever killer.

Fang by James Patterson Being a kid with wings–constantly on the run–has never been easy, and Max and her flock are getting tenser than ever. First, on a trip to Africa, they meet a mysterious billionaire whose intense scrutiny of the Flock makes her fear the worst. Then, a cryptic message from a young girl arrives, warning them “The sky will fall.” And as if an impending apocalypse weren’t bad enough, canny birdkid Angel makes a dire prophecy about Max’s soul mate: Fang will be the first to die. Max’s desperate desire to protect Fang brings the two closer than ever. But can the team weather the storm, or will the turmoil rip them apart for the last time?