Search results for ""Author Donna Leon""

A delightful companion in life and on the page' The TimesDonna Leon has created a beautifully crafted looking glass into her world' TLSIn a series of vignettes full of affection, irony, and good humor, Donna Leon narrates a remarkable life she feels has rather more happened to her than been planned.From a childhood in the company of her New Jersey family, with frequent visits to her grandfather''s farm and its beloved animals and summers spent selling homegrown tomatoes by the roadside, Leon has long been open to adventure. In 1976, she made the spontaneous decision to teach English in Iran, before finding herself swept up in the early days of the 1979 Revolution. After teaching stints in China and Saudi Arabia, she finally landed in Venice. Leon vividly animates her decades-long love affair with Italy, from her first magical dinner when serving as a chaperone to a friend, to the hunt for the perfect cappuccino, to the warfare tact

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Commissario Guido Brunetti returns with a gripping and powerful case about the murkiness of power and a test of loyaltiesWhen two teenage gangs are arrested after clashing violently in one of Venice's campi, the son of a local hero is implicated. But when Commissario Guido Brunetti is asked by a wealthy foreigner to vet this man, Monforte, for a job, he discovers that Monforte might not be such a hero after all.This seeming contradiction, and a brutal attack on one of Brunetti's colleagues by a possible gang member, concentrate Brunetti's attentions. Soon, he discovers the sordid hypocrisy surrounding Monforte's past, culminating in a fiery meeting of two gangs and a final opportunity for redemption.A Refiner's Fire is Donna Leon at her very best: an elegant, sophisticated storyteller whose indelible characters become richer with each book, and who constantly interrogates the ambiguity between moral and legal justice.

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'In The Girl of His Dreams, Donna Leon is writing at her fluent best.' The Independent2008 Washington Post Book World Best Book of the YearIndependent Mystery Booksellers Association Bestseller____________________________________________One rainy morning Commissario Brunetti and Ispettore Vianello respond to an emergency call reporting a body floating near some steps on the Grand Canal. Reaching down to pull it out, Brunetti's wrist is caught by the silkiness of golden hair, and he sees a small foot - together he and Vianello lift a dead girl from the water.But, inconceivably, no one has reported a missing child, nor the theft of the gold jewellery that she carries. Brunetti is drawn into a search not only for the cause of her death but also for her identity, her family, and for the secrets that people will keep in order to protect their children - be they innocent or guilty.From the canals and palazzi of Venice to a gypsy encampment on the mainland, Brunetti struggles with institutional prejudice and entrenched criminality to try to unravel the fate of the dead child.

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The Italian detective Commissario Brunetti has to cut short his holiday as he takes on another tantalizing case in Donna Leon's The Anonymous Venetian, an atmospheric murder mystery filled with the sights and sounds of Venice.Commissario Brunetti's hopes of a refreshing family holiday in the mountains are once again dashed when a gruesome discovery is made in Marghera – a body so badly beaten the face is unrecognizable.Brunetti searches Venice for someone who can identify the dead man. But he is met with a wall of silence.Then he receives a telephone call from a contact who promises some intriguing information. And before the night is out Brunetti is confronting yet another appalling and apparently senseless death . . .The third novel in the Commissario Brunetti Venetian crime series, which also includes Acqua Alta and So Shall You Reap.'A splendid series . . . with a backdrop of the city so vivid you can almost smell it' – Sunday Telegraph

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A lorry crashes on one of the treacherous bends in the Italian Dolomites, spilling a terrible cargo . . . A prominent international layer is found dead in the carriage of an intercity train at Saint Lucia . . . Can the two tragedies possibly be connected? Commissario Guido Brunetti digs deep into the secret lives of the once great and good for the answer. For in a seedy Venetian bar lies the clue to an evil crime network reaching far beyond the laguna. But it will take another violent death in Venice before the forces of justice can even begin to proceed . . .

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The Italian detective Commissario Brunetti takes on another intriguing, but personal case in Donna Leon's Acqua Alta, an atmospheric murder mystery filled with the sights and sounds of Venice.Commissario Guido Brunetti of the Venice Questura is shocked to hear that his friend and art historian, Brett Lynch, has suffered a savage beating.The attack, in the beautiful palazzo home of Flavia Petrelli, reigning diva of La Scala, had come with a message: 'Don't keep that appointment with Dottor Semenzato.'Then, with the storm clouds gathering fast over the city, a man's body is found . . .The fifth novel in the Commissario Brunetti Venetian crime series, which also includes The Anonymous Venetian and So Shall You Reap.'A splendid series . . . with a backdrop of the city so vivid you can almost smell it' – Sunday Telegraph

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Commissario Guido Brunetti is kicking his heels, pondering the recent lack of crime in Venice, when a beautiful young woman appears at his office door. Now calling herself Maria Testa, his visitor is more familiar to Brunetti as Suor’lmmacolata, the nun who once cared for his mother at the casa di cura in Dolo. But Maria has recently left her convent after the unexpected deaths of five patients. Brunetti offers to make some enquiries, but finds now obvious cause for concern. Is Maria simply creating fears to justify abandoning her vocation? Or has she stumbled on to a deeply rooted, far more sinister scenario - and put her own life in very grave danger . . . ?

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'A classic example of detective-book murder . . . Leon whips up a brilliant narrative storm' Sunday TimesWhen Commissario Brunetti receives a visit from one of his wife's students with a strange and vague interest in investigating the possibility of a pardon for a crime committed by her grandfather many years ago, he thinks little of it, despite being intrigued by the girl's intelligence and moral conscience. But when the girl is found stabbed to death, Claudia Leonardo is no longer Paola's student, but instead becomes Brunetti's case.Claudia seems to have no discernible living family, but lived with an elderly Austrian woman. When she in turn is found dead, the case begins to unlock long buried secrets of collaboration during the war, secrets few in Italy are happy to explore . . .'Wholly engrossing' Evening Standard

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