Venice, 1745—an age of reckless pleasures, playful artifice, and baroque excess. An accident has reduced Tito Amato’s glorious singing voice to a husky croak. A tragedy— but also an opportunity. The once celebrated male soprano is now determined to prove himself as a director. With the theater losing subscribers to a rival company headed by an unscrupulous impresario, San Marco’s Maestro Torani charges Tito with locating the perfect opera to fill the seats in time for the opening of Carnival. Surprisingly, a second-rate composer provides the very thing—an opera so replete with gorgeous melodies the public speculates it was written by the late Antonio Vivaldi. Even more disconcerting are the rumors swirling around Angeletto, a male soprano imported from Naples to sing the lead. Is the singer truly a castrato or a female soprano engaging in a daring but lucrative masquerade? Both matters lead the perplexed Tito into dangerous waters that turn murderous when Maestro Torani undergoes a series of increasingly vicious attacks ending in his death. And Tito is the prime suspect. His own life as well as the future of Teatro San Marco now depend on his skills as a sleuth….   

December, 1941: With New Yorkers painfully aware of their vulnerability after the Pearl Harbor attack, the FBI prowls the city snatching up Japanese residents. Tension increases for a sensitive Japanese artist when she’s accused of murder as well as espionage. Is Masako Fumi guilty? Or a victim of racial paranoia? Nurse Louise Hunter is outraged and vows to help her friend.When the murdered body of Masako’s art dealer is discovered in the gallery where he’d been closing down her controversial show, Masako’s troubles multiply. Homicide detective Michael McKenna doubts her guilt, but an ambitious G-man schemes to lever the homicide and ensuing espionage accusations into a political cause célèbre.Struggling to focus on one man’s murder while America plunges into a worldwide war, Louise and McKenna defy both racism and ham-fisted government agents in order to expose the real killer.

Returning to Venice in 1731, Tito, who was mutilated as a boy to preserve his exceptional soprano voice, finds his opera premier shattered by the murder of a close friend and the subsequent arrest of another, and conducts his own investigation that reveals the shocking secrets of his own family and friends.

Relegated to secondary roles and overshadowed by a visiting star, castrato soprano Tito Amato gets his chance to restore his reputation when he launches an investigation into the murder of scene painter Luca Cavalieri, joining forces with Augustus 'Gussie' Rumbolt, an Englishman on his Grand Tour, to journey into the treacherous depths of pleasure-loving 1734 Venice. (Mystery)

Product Description: Venice, 1731.The dazzling city on the lagoon is sailing toward the ruin of her maritime empire, determined to go down in a maelstrom of pleasure, music, and masquerade. Opera is the popular entertainment of the day and the castrati are its reigning divas...read more

Product Description: Praise for Painted Veil... "An insightful and tender look at how those who are different...were treated at the time, as well as a wonderful view of elegant, decadent, nothing-is-as-it-seems-from-behind-the-masque Venice." -Publishers Weekly starred review "Painted Veil is the best kind of historical mystery...read more

Product Description: In September of 1740, singer Tito Amato receives a curious invitation. The German composer Karl Johann Weber is rehearsing a new opera at an isolated villa nestled in the hills of the Venetian mainland. Would Tito accept the lead role? Puzzled by the air of secrecy that enshrouds the production, but attracted by a generous fee, Tito agrees...read more

Product Description: [MP3CD audiobook format in vinyl case.] [Read by Geoffrey Blaisdell] In Venice in 1742, Tito Amato is singing lead roles at the Teatro San Marco. On opening night, he has the entire audience entranced, except for one box with its scarlet curtains tightly drawn...read more

Product Description: Tito Amato returns from an operatic tour expecting to relax with his family. Instead he finds his merchant brother Alessandro imprisoned on a trumped-up smuggling charge, a capital crime in 1740 Venice. The senator who controls Alessandro's fate is determined to have a Venetian as the next pope...read more

Relegated to secondary roles and overshadowed by a visiting star, castrato soprano Tito Amato gets his chance to restore his reputation when he launches an investigation into the murder of scene painter Luca Cavalieri, joining forces with Augustus 'Gussie' Rumbolt, an Englishman on his Grand Tour, to journey into the treacherous depths of pleasure-loving 1734 Venice.

The impending death of a pope sparks a web peril, intrigue, greed, and murder for Tito Amato and his family when his merchant brother Alessandro is imprisoned on a trumped-up smuggling charge thanks to a senator who is willing to do anything to ensure that a Venetian will sit on the Throne of St. Peter after the upcoming papal election, in a mystery set in eighteenth-century Venice.

Product Description: The dazzling city on the lagoon is sailing toward the ruin of her maritime empire, determined to go down in a maelstrom of pleasure, music, and masquerade....Venice, 1731. Opera is the popular entertainment of the day and the castrati are its reigning divas...read more