florence (italy)

No face has ever captivated so many for so long. Every year more than nine million visitors trek to her portrait in the Louvre. Yet while everyone recognizes her smile, hardly anyone knows her story. This book rests on the premise that the woman in the Mona Lisa is indeed the person identified in its earliest description: Lisa Gherardini (1479-1542), wife of the Florence merchant Francesco del Giocondo. Descended from ancient nobles, she gave birth to six children and died at age sixty-three. Her life spanned the most tumultuous chapters in the history of Florence, decades of war, rebellion, invasion, siege, and conquest--and of the greatest artistic outpouring the world has ever seen. Her story creates an extraordinary tapestry of Renaissance Florence, inhabited by larger-than-legend figures such as Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Machiavelli.

A comprehensive biography of Lorenzo de'Medici, Italian statesman and ruler of the Florentine Republic during the Italian Renaissance.

Collects Anne Rice's "Pandora," in which an ancient vampire shares her experiences since her days as one of the living during the time of Christ before being changed into the undead; and "Vittorio, the Vampire," in which a five-hundred-year-old vampire relates how he was seduced, at the age of sixteen, by Ursula, a supernatural creature who saved him from being killed.

In Renaissance Florence, Luca Bastardo tries to understand the source of his immortality while coming in contact with artists, philosophers, wealthy men, beautiful women, and alchemists.

Marshal Guarnaccia of the Italian police in Florence is summoned to the home of the Paoletti family when Daniela, the oldest Paoletti daughter, is found shot to death on the floor of her bedroom, and as he tries to find the truth, Guarnaccia also learns some surprising facts about his neighbors.