We have always been fascinated by literary masterworks that stage the plague as a pivotal factor in the plot. We added the next ingredients: a whodunnit with a claustrophobic setting, the Baroque Age, a (real) financial thriller between Rome and London, and an unusual protagonist. Rita is a historian of religions, Francesco is a musicologist. After working as journalists, meeting in a newspaper bureau, and getting happily married, we started a writing career publishing 11 novels translated into 26 languages and 60 countries with more than 2 million copies sold. Our novels are a mix of literary creativity and meticulous research, characters and settings are strictly based on original documents and eyewitness accounts.
September 11, 1683, Rome. In a tavern, the sudden death of an old traveller arouses suspicions. An outbreak of plague causes all the guests to be placed under quarantine. Among them is the mysterious Abbott Atto Melani, castrato and spy of the Sun King. Accompanied by the tavern’s young serving boy, Melani evades the quarantine at night to shed light on the murder case. His investigation brings to light a gigantic plot that involves the truth about a double-faced Pope and the destiny of the English Crown.
Based on original papers of the Vatican secret archives and first published in Italy to great controversy in 2002, Imprimatur became an international bestseller but soon disappeared from the Italian bookstores. Only in 2015 the novel was available again in original language.
A must for all of you, lovers (hopefully) of intelligence and humor. Avidly read and re-written by the superstars of English literature (Chaucer, Shakespeare), Boccaccio’s celebrated cycle of short stories, told by seven ladies and three gentlemen sheltered in the countryside near Florence during the Black Plague, is a timeless summa of wit, narrative pleasure, and literary sophistication. Even historians recycled Boccaccio’s juicy, gossipy accounts to feature (or slander) their characters.
In the summer of 1348, as the Black Death ravages their city, ten young Florentines take refuge in the countryside...
Taken from the Greek, meaning 'ten-day event', Boccaccio's Decameron sees his characters amuse themselves by each telling a story a day, for the ten days of their confinement - a hundred stories of love and adventure, life and death, and surprising twists of fate. Less preoccupied with abstract concepts of morality or religion than earthly values, the tales range from the bawdy Peronella, hiding her lover in a tub, to Ser Cepperallo, who, despite his unholy effrontery, becomes a Saint.…
For fans of faction (facts + fiction) like us. Imaginary but extremely well-documented memoir of the plague epidemic of London in 1665, Defoe’s Journal contains a good deal of historical information, and it’s been disputed whether it’s based on an original (and now lost) historical document – more likely Defoe’s sources were Samuel Pepy’s Diary and other contemporary accounts. A must-read for all lovers of English history in the Baroque age.
The haunting cry of "Bring out your dead!" by a bell-ringing collector of 17th-century plague victims has filled readers across the centuries with cold terror. The chilling cry survives in historical consciousness largely as a result of this classic 1722 account of the epidemic of bubonic plague — known as the Black Death — that ravaged England in 1664–1665. Actually written nearly 60 years later by Daniel Defoe, the Journal is narrated by a Londoner named "H. F.," who allegedly lived through the devastating effects of the pestilence and produced this eye witness account. Drawing on his considerable talents as…
Dark, sweet, intense perfumes of North Africa emanate from the bitter-sweet semi-autobiographical story of doctor Rieux, monsieur Tarrou, and the rich constellation of characters involved in the tragic events, culminating in a deadly outbreak, set in post-war Algeria.
Glorified by the French liberal intelligentsia, today perhaps slightly passé but still vibrating and proud, Camus’ masterpieceis austere and overwhelming like a tango dancer.
“Its relevance lashes you across the face.” —Stephen Metcalf, The Los Angeles Times • “A redemptive book, one that wills the reader to believe, even in a time of despair.” —Roger Lowenstein, The Washington Post
A haunting tale of human resilience and hope in the face of unrelieved horror, Albert Camus' iconic novel about an epidemic ravaging the people of a North African coastal town is a classic of twentieth-century literature.
The townspeople of Oran are in the grip of a deadly plague, which condemns its victims to a swift and horrifying death. Fear, isolation and claustrophobia follow as they…
Nobody can describe the plague better than... one who’s been infected. 430 BC: coming from Ethiopia through Egypt, a massive plague outbreak hits the overpopulated Athens, right in the middle of a bitter war against Sparta. Thucydides, the first Greek historian with a modern approach, witnesses the tragic days (doctors and authorities were totally unprepared) of the largest metropolis in the Mediterranean. The author himself is contaminated and later recounts his experience in this unforgettable section of his History of the Peloponnesian War.
The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars. Western literary study flows out of eighteenth-century works by Alexander Pope, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding,…
This epic novel in Walter Scott’s good tradition, but with a plus of philosophical depth, taught us (and generations of authors) how to wave together love and hope, freedom and destiny, pride and courage. The plague’s tragic outcome around 1630 in northern Italy offered such a powerful literary palette that Manzoni had to spin off a chapter about the epidemic and publish it separately. Nevertheless, The Betrothed is still marked by death and devastation, the hysterical witch-hunt against the alleged “plague-spreaders” and the impressive scenes in the lazarettos.
Set in Lombardy during the Spanish occupation of the late 1620s, The Betrothed tells the story of two young lovers, Renzo and Lucia, prevented from marrying by the petty tyrant Don Rodrigo, who desires Lucia for himself. Forced to flee, they are then cruelly separated, and must face many dangers including plague, famine and imprisonment, and confront a variety of strange characters - the mysterious Nun of Monza, the fiery Father Cristoforo and the sinister 'Unnamed' - in their struggle to be reunited. A vigorous portrayal of enduring passion,
On the expertise I claim only a deep interest in history, leadership, and social history. After some thirty-six years in the fire and emergency services I can, I think, claim to have seen the best and the worst of human behaviour and condition. History, particularly naval history, has always been one of my interests and the Battle of Jutland is a truly fascinating study in the importance of communication between the leader and every level between him/her and the people performing whatever task is required. In my own career, on a very much smaller scale, this is a lesson every officer learns very quickly.
Captain Heron finds himself embroiled in a conflict that threatens to bring down the world order he is sworn to defend when a secretive Consortium seeks to undermine the World Treaty Organisation and the democracies it represents as he oversees the building and commissioning of a new starship.
When the Consortium employs an assassin from the Pantheon, it becomes personal.
Captain James Heron First Into the Fray: Prequel to Harry Heron Into the Unknown of the Harry Heron Series
The year is 2202, and the recently widowed Captain James Heron is appointed to stand by his next command, the starship NECS Vanguard, while she is being built. He and his team soon discover that they are battling the Consortium, a shadowy corporate group that seeks to steal the specs for the ship’s new super weapon. The Consortium hires the Pantheon, a mysterious espionage agency, to do their dirty work as they lay plans to take down the Fleet and gain supreme power on an intergalactic scale. When Pantheon Agent Bast and her team kidnap Felicity Rowanberg, a Fleet agent…
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