Crooked Lane Books
June 2024
On Sale: June 18, 2024
320 pages ISBN: 1639107878 EAN: 9781639107872 Kindle: B0CJBGSFPS Hardcover / e-Book Add to Wish List
A Renaissance courtesan must choose between love and duty in this high stakes 16th-century mystery, perfect for fans of Madeline Hunter and Rhys Bowen.
Valentina Riccardi is many things: beautiful, cultured, deadly. As one of Venice’s famous courtesans, she’s perfectly positioned to seduce powerful men, get them alone, and assassinate them. Spies. Traitors. Who they are doesn’t matter—only that they made an enemy of the Council of Ten, the shadowy and seemingly omniscient power from which Valentina takes her orders without question.
Venice is her home, and after losing everything once before to an invading army, there is nothing she won’t do to protect her city, for there is nothing she loves more.
Almost nothing.
She vowed to never fall in love again, but Valentina can’t help but give her heart to Bastiano Bragadin, a fellow assassin. But when Bastiano starts asking the wrong questions, Valentina receives a new assignment: kill him.
Yet the more Valentina learns about the Council of Ten, the more she wonders if they are truly acting in the interest of the Venetian state, or using her for their own dark ambitions. If Valentina is to save Bastiano, she must untangle their conspiracy—with the help of her fellow courtesans—before it’s too late.
The Assassin of Venice is a captivating, sensual, high stakes read that brings 16th-century Venice to life, and draws on the fascinating real history of both Venetian cortigiane oneste—“honest courtesans”—and Renaissance Venice’s sprawling intelligence service.
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