"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...

Donna Leon's "Death at La Fenice," the first novel in her beloved Commissario Guido Brunetti series, introduced readers to the glamorous and cutthroat world of opera and one of Italy's finest living sopranos, Flavia Petrelli, then a suspect in the poisoning of a renowned German conductor. Years after Brunetti cleared her name and saved the life of her female American lover in "Acqua Alta," Flavia has returned to Venice and La Fenice to sing the lead...

Fifteen years ago, a teenage girl fell into a canal late at night. Unable to swim, she went under and started to drown, only surviving thanks to a nearby man, an alcoholic, who heard her splashes and pulled her out, though not before she suffered irreparable brain damage that left her in a state of permanent childhood. The drunk man claimed he saw her thrown into the canal by another man, but the following day he couldn't remember a thing. Now, at...

When the body of man is found in a canal, damaged by the tides, carrying no wallet, and wearing only one shoe, Brunetti has little to work with. No local has filed a missing-person report, and no hotel guests have disappeared. Where was the crime scene? And how can Brunetti identify the man when he can't show pictures of his face? The autopsy shows a way forward: it turns out the man was suffering from a rare, disfiguring disease. With Inspector Vianello,...

One cold and rainy morning, the body of a gypsy is found floating in a canal. Brunetti suspects she fell off a nearby roof while fleeing an apartment she had robbed--but something about the case continues to haunt him.

"In The Golden Egg, as the first leaves of autumn begin to fall, Vice Questore Patta asks Brunetti to look into a minor violation committed by the mayor's future daughter-in-law. Brunetti has no interest in helping his boss amass political favors, but he has little choice but to comply. Then Brunetti's wife, Paola, comes to him with a request of her own. The mentally handicapped man who worked at their dry cleaners has just died of a sleeping pill...

Through the warm-hearted, perceptive, and principled Commissario Guido Brunetti, Donna Leon has brought us Venice in all its aspects. Now Leon returns to one of her signature subjects: the environment, which has reached a crisis in Italy. In Venice, with the polluted waters of the canals, the issue is significant. For Brunetti, it becomes so when an investigator from the Carabiniere, looking into the illegal hauling of garbage, asks for a favor. (Bestseller)...

An annotated copy of Dante's Inferno, found at the scene of the crime, may contain the clues Brunetti needs to solve the murder - and uncover who is ruining the waters of Venice's lagoon. But Brunetti needs the help of his wife, Paola, a professor of literature, and his daughter, Chiara, who should be doing her Latin homework. Over long lunches, on secret boat rides, and in quiet bars, as the weather heats up, the flowers come into bloom, and the...

"Donna Leon's bestselling mystery novels have won a multitude of fans for their insider's portrayal of Venice. From family meals to vaporetti rides, the details and rhythms of everyday life are an integral part of this beloved series. But so are the never-ending influx of tourists and the suffocating corruption. Through it all, Leon's Commissario Guido Brunetti, a good man who loves his family and his city, has been an enduring figure, but in Earthly...

"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 the clues point to a violent mugging, but for Brunetti the motive of robbery seems altogether too convenient. When something is discovered in the victim's apartment that suggests the existence of a high level conspiracy, Brunetti becomes convinced that somebody, somewhere, is taking great pains to provide a ready-made...