Donna Leon

A brutal attack on a pediatrician by a Carabiniere captain and two privates, who also take away the doctor's eighteen-month-old son, draws Commissario Guido Brunetti into a dangerous case involving a ring of baby traffickers.

Investigating the lack of a building permit for Commissioner Brunetti's apartment, a young bureaucrat uncovers a frightening secret and promptly dies from an apparently accidental fall; investigating his death in turn, Brunetti is drawn into a world of drugs, loan-sharking, and corruption.

Venetian detective Guido Brunetti swings into action when the curator of Venice's most prestigious museum turns up dead, bludgeoned by a priceless artifact, and an American archaeologist and close friend narrowly escapes the killer.

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 A Noble Radiance, a new landowner is summoned urgently to his house not far from Venice when workmen accidentally unearth a macabre grave. The human corpse is badly decomposed, but a ring found nearby proves to be a clue that reopens an infamous case of kidnapping involving one of Venice's most aristocratic families. Only Commissario Brunetti can unravel the clues and find his way into both the hearts of patrician Venice and that of a family grieving...

"[On a beautiful spring morning] on the island of Pellestrina, south of the Lido on the Venetian lagoon, a small boat moored at the docks suddenly explodes, killing two local clam fishermen. When it becomes clear that the fire was deliberately set, Brunetti decides to investigate. But when he tries to dig up information about the murder, the island's tight-knit--and closemouthed--community closes ranks, forcing Brunetti to accept Signorina Elettra's...

Caterina Pellegrini is a native Venetian, and like so many of them, she's had to leave home to pursue her career. With a doctorate in baroque opera from Vienna, she lands in Manchester, England. Manchester, however, is no Venice. When Caterina gets word of a position back home, she jumps at the opportunity. The job is an unusual one. After nearly three centuries, two locked trunks, believed to contain the papers of a baroque composer have been discovered....

"Donna Leon has won a huge number of passionate fans and a tremendous amount of critical acclaim for her international bestselling mystery series featuring Venetian Commissario Guido Brunetti. These accolades have built up not just for her intricate plots and gripping narratives, but for her insight into the culture, politics, family-life, and history of Venice, one of the world's most-treasured cities, and Leon's home for over thirty years. Readers...

When acclaimed novelist Donna Leon is not conjuring up tales of crime and corruption in Venice, or reveling in delicious cuisine, she is listening to music. For Leon, patron of conductor Alan Curtis and his celebrated orchestra Il Complesso Barocco, that usually means the work of her favorite composer, George Frideric Handel. Over the years, Leon has noticed that the great musician filled his operas with arias that make reference to animals; rich...

Among their many pleasures, Donna Leon's Commissario Guido Brunetti novels have long been celebrated for their mouth-watering descriptions of food. Multicourse lunches at home with Paola and the children, snacks grabbed at a bar with a glass of wine or two, a quick sandwich during a busy day, or a working lunch at a neighborhood trattoria in the course of an investigation have all delighted Brunetti, as well as Leon's readers and reviewers. And then...