With their stomachs churning on the jewels they have swallowed, the courtesan Fiammetta and her companion dwarf Bucino escape the sack of Rome. It's 1527. They head for the shimmering, decadent city of Venice. Sarah Dunant's epic novel of sixteenth-century Renaissance Italy is a story about the sins of pleasure and the pleasures of sin, an intoxicating mix of fact and fiction, and a dazzling portait of one of the worlds greatest cities at its most potent moment in history.

'There is no more accomplished guide to Renaissance Italy than Sarah Dunant . . . An enthralling novel that will give the reader as much pleasure as Fiammetta does her clients' Michael Arditti, Daily Mail

'Bucino makes for a strong but tragic narrator. Page after page, he draws the reader into Venice's seamy underworld' Liane Kolirin, Daily Express

'A loving, intricate portrait of Venice - a city which magics light, glass and water into living entities - her story blends beatury and brutality into an intimaite and thrilling portrait of an age' Lisa Hilton, Sunday Telegraph