Secret Books of Venus

In the hedonistic atmosphere of an eighteenth-century Venice Carnival, gaiety turns deadly when Furian Furiano happens upon a mask of Apollo floating in the murky waters of the canals. The mask hides a sinister art, and Furian finds himself trapped in a bizarre tangle of love, obsession, and evil, stumbling into a macabre society of murderers. The beautiful but elusive Eurydiche holds the key to these murders and leads him further into a labyrinth of black magic and ancient alchemy. Why do secrets from Furian's past seem tied to the mysterious Eurydiche? In Tanith Lee's brilliantly imagined world of violence and terror, Furian must find a way to survive and stem the obsession driving him toward his hidden destiny.

Following Faces Under Water, Tanith Lee's alchemical thriller series continues with a Joan of Arc–inspired novel set in an alternate medieval Venice. In Saint Fire, the second volume in the Secret Books of Venus series, Volpa is a strangely beautiful servant girl who glows with an inhuman inner flame. When her master, an abusive wood seller, is mysteriously incinerated, Volpa discovers her power of fire. Her gift is noticed by the Church leaders, who see her as a mighty weapon in their holy wars. This gripping fantasy of a mysteriously gifted Joan of Arc is stunning from beginning to end.

The struggle between the two families for space on the Isle of the Dead, the overcrowded burial ground for generations of Venetian nobility, boils over and a fourteen-year-old girl is forced to pay the ultimate price. As the years pass on, parties complicit in her disappearance begin to suffer the consequences in a series of shocking deaths. A humble apprentice gravedigger is left to sort out the mysteries and subdue the ancient terror that threatens to destroy the entire republic.

The struggle between the two families for space on the Isle of the Dead, the overcrowded burial ground for generations of Venetian nobility, boils over and a fourteen-year-old girl is forced to pay the ultimate price. As the years pass on, parties complicit in her disappearance begin to suffer the consequences in a series of shocking deaths. A humble apprentice gravedigger is left to sort out the mysteries and subdue the ancient terror that threatens to destroy the entire republic.

The final novel in the alchemical thriller series set in an alternate Venice by the World Fantasy Award–winning author of A Bed of Earth. Centuries into the future, the sunken city of Venus has been salvaged from beneath the sea and rebuilt there under a dome, where it is supported by a vast network of computers that regulate weather, noise, and the most precious undersea commodity of all-air. It is here that a macabre experiment takes place. Conducted by geneticists at the university, the test consists of the resurrection of two lost souls, both murdered in their times: Jula, a first-century gladiatrix, and Cloudio del Nero, the eighteenth-century composer who met his fate in Lee's acclaimed first volume of the Secret Books of Venus series. An unexplained catastrophe occurs, claiming several lives. Was it merely an accident, computer failure, or has the trial unleashed an airborne virus? Or is there an even more sinister danger afoot, a force from beyond that threatens the survival of Venus itself? To answer these questions, a traveler from the surface is forced to confront mysteries in his own past that have remained buried, and to reveal the connection that ties him to the unavenged spirits wreaking havoc on the doomed city.