Ocean State Libraries

This Edwardian social comedy explores love and prim propriety among an eccentric cast of characters assembled in an Italian pensione and in a corner of Surrey, England. A charming young English woman, Lucy Honeychurch, faints into the arms of a fellow Britisher when she witnesses a murder in a Florentine piazza. Attracted to this man, George Emerson -- who is entirely unsuitable and whose father just may be a Socialist -- Lucy is soon at war with...

"What if you just walked by the love of your life, but didn't even know it? Tess is in Florence on vacation before starting university in London. Gus is on holiday with his parents after a tragedy shattered their lives seven months ago, and is planning for medical school in London. Chance brings these eighteen-year-olds together for a brief moment-- and then sets them apart. But it's only the first of many times their paths will crisscross as time...

Florence, 1963. One of the few policemen left in the deserted city, Inspector Bordelli spends his days on routine work and his nights tormented by the heat and mosquitoes. Then a telephone call gives him a new sense of purpose: the suspected death of a wealthy signora. Bordelli rushes to her hilltop villa and picks the locks. He finds the old woman apparently killed by an asthma attack - though her medicine, close by, has been left untouched.

"As the last will of a close friend is read, three women discover that they have inherited a legacy from her: the funds to take a dream trip to Florence, Italy, in her memory. With plenty of hilarious travel mishaps along the way, this book is a story of deep friendship, of making room in our lives to celebrate and remember, of grief, of the realization that friendship keeps the memory alive, and the sweet discovery of unexpected romance"--

Meet Sandro Cellini, Florence's answer to Donna Leon's Guido Brunetti. One wet November in Florence, the grieving widow of an eminent Jewish architect comes to visit Sandro Cellini, good husband, disgraced ex-policeman, and recently turned PI, to ask him to investigate her husband's suicide. Cellini takes her on out of sympathy, although this first case makes a downbeat start to his new career. There seems no doubt that Claudio Gentileschi, a Holocaust...

Two heroes, reflective Peter and Byronic Chase, indulge their youthful appetites in Florence. Over the next 20 years their paths diverge and reconverge. Chase marries into the Italian aristocracy and Peter pursues his passion for Lorenzo, a beautiful young Florentine. The past impinges on the present as the story of Chase's ancestor, Orvil Starkweather, is revealed – the secrets of his life sounding a counterpoint to Chase's. New York City's Central...

Two foreign girls are abducted from a Florence piazza in broad daylight. The unusual March snowfall has distracted everyone-even Marshal Guarnaccia, who is unsure of what he has actually witnessed. Then one of the girls turns up in a village in the Chianti, claiming the kidnappers have released her to propose a ransom for the other victim. But the marshal thinks she's lying. Besides, Italian law forbids paying ransom to criminals, so the marshal must...

The secret world of a murder victim leads detective Sandro Cellini to uncover the hidden life of a woman consumed by a deadly obsession. When the driven, charismatic leader of a Florentine political movement collapses at a rally, his young party immediately comes under threat. And when, it emerges that his wife, Flavia, has disappeared, leaving behind not only a devastated husband but their newborn son, the political becomes dangerously personal-and...