St. Peter's Square, Rome. White smoke signals that a new Pope has been chosen. Is it possible that the new Pope is a woman? The world is watching as historic crowds gather in Rome, waiting for news of a new Pope, one who promises to be unlike any other in the Church's history. Some followers are ecstatic, but the leading candidate has made a legion of powerful enemies. From a difficult childhood with drug addled parents, to a career as a doctor on...

Nine-year-old Lawrence watches protectively over his mother and little sister, especially when, feeling endangered by their estranged father, his mother decides the three of them must leave their life in England to seek refuge in Rome.

A horrific murder pitches Nic Costa and his team into a collision with US agents – and a secret that has festered for fifteen years. The snow is falling on the ancient streets of Rome. And in the heart of the city, under the Pantheon's great dome, a woman's body lies on the marble floor, carefully positioned with a gruesome carving on her back. Arriving at the scene, Detective Nic Costa is unprepared for what he finds, nor for the intervention of...

Peter Bruegel's paintings---a peasant wedding in a barn, hunters in the snow, a rollicking street festival, and many others---have long defined our idea of everyday life in sixteenth century Europe. They are classic icons of a time and place in much the same way as Norman Rockwell's depictions of twentieth-century America. We know relatively little about Bruegel, but after years of research, novelist Rudy Rucker has built upon what is known and has...

As celebrities and paparazzi gather in Rome for the premiere of a film version of Dante's "Inferno," a man is found dead and the film's star is missing, leading Detective Nic Costa on a terrifying journey from Rome to San Francisco and beyond.

A trip to Italy reignites a woman's desires to disastrous effect in this dark ode to womanhood, death, and sex.

This work is a novel about first lovers meeting again after more than thirty years, walking the streets of Rome and reimmersing themselves in their lost past. Miranda and Adam, high school sweethearts now in their late fifties, arrive by chance at the same time in Rome, where they once spent a summer deeply in love, blissfully living together. At an awkward reunion, the two, who parted in an atmosphere of passionate betrayal in the 1960s and haven't...