June 24, 2013 Anna Rosenthal is a thirty-five-year-old widow who can’t seem to move on with her life. Enter her estranged grandmother, Goldie, who demands that Anna drive her across country to return a set of Japanese prints that have been in her possession since World War II. The resulting journey could take the form of either farce or tragedy, but Dana Sachs makes The Secret of the Nightingale Palace a much more nuanced look at love, loss, and the secrets every life holds.

January 10, 2013 In Alana White’s debut novel, The Sign of the Weeping Virgin, Guid’Antonio Vespucci and his nephew Amerigo return from a two-year diplomatic mission to Paris only to find their native Florence in disarray. A young woman has been kidnapped, supposedly by the infidel Turks, and a painting of the Virgin Mary is weeping in the Vespucci home church. In fifteenth-century Italy, these events are equally disturbing. Many in Florence believe the Virgin is weeping over Lorenzo Medici’s long argument with Pope Sixtus IV. Rebellion and mutiny are in the air.

October 22, 2012 When Lady Emily Hargreaves heads to Italy, it’s a fair bet that she isn’t on vacation. In fact, Emily—the heroine of Death in the Floating City, Tasha Alexander’s seventh Victorian mystery—arrives in Venice to solve a murder. To find the killer, she must investigate not only those around her but also the lives of star-crossed lovers who lived centuries before. Fans of Alexander, a former Franklin resident, know Emily will manage it all with charm, intelligence, and ladylike decorum. Tasha Alexander will discuss Death in the Floating City at Parnassus Books on October 24 at 6:30 p.m.