The Medici Dagger
The Medici Dagger

Author: Cameron West

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2002-01-17

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0743424514

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1491: Leonardo looked upon his invention, understood its powers, and knew he must hide it from the men of his age. Thus, a profound treasure was lost for five centuries. Now the race to find it begins. Hurtling across the Atlantic, a plane goes down -- taking with it a page from the journals of Leonardo da Vinci. In Georgetown, the home of museum curator Rollo Barnett burns to the ground. Only his young son, Reb, escapes alive. Are the tragedies connected? Are they merely accidents or acts of murder? Twenty years later, Hollywood stuntman Reb Barnett, an educated, art-loving, high-risk-addicted daredevil on the run from his nightmares, refuses to believe so. Until a phone call rips him from his world of cinematic illusion, and sends him to Italy on a desperate quest where danger and violence are chillingly real. Reb seeks da Vinci's Circles of Truth, a coded fifteenth-century map that reveals the hiding place of the Medici Dagger, a weapon made of an alloy so light and indestructible it is worth a fortune to today's arms manufacturers. To Reb, it is worth even more -- it is his only link to finding the truth about his father's death, and to laying bare the dark demons of his own heart. But finding the Circles of Truth is only the first step. Breaking their complex code means matching wits with Leonardo himself. And staying alive means keeping one jump ahead of a shadowy adversary: the killer who haunts Reb's dreams. From the brilliant Tuscan landscape to the lush California coast, The Medici Dagger sweeps readers into an intriguing intellectual puzzle that delivers shattering suspense and fiery romance with the velocity of a 9mm bullet. Cameron West generates the roller-coaster thrills of the great classic adventure stories -- with the adrenaline rush of walking on a knife's edge between excitement and terror.

The Medici Project
The Medici Project

Author: Zachary Elliott

Publisher: Lulu.com

Published: 2019-08-27

Total Pages: 424

ISBN-13: 0359903312

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Dr. Michael Rabens, a high-class bookworm with an IQ of 160, has just received a doctorate in art history from Princeton. With a love for architecture and history, and a deep desire to discover truth, the sophisticated graduate begins his very own research expedition in Rome, a region rife with social and political conflicts. There he makes a sudden surprising discovery: a series of letters describing a mysterious project in Renaissance Florence, commissioned by the powerful Medici family. But when the letters are stolen by an unlikely enemy, he finds himself at the center of a dangerous plot. After being rescued by renegade spies, he must work to stop the plot from happening, using his knowledge of architecture and history to unearth the Medici Project before its contents end up in enemy hands. Yet Dr. Rabens soon realizes his book knowledge can only get him so far, as he must find the courage to confront his own fears.

Art, Mobility, and Exchange in Early Modern Tuscany and Eurasia
Art, Mobility, and Exchange in Early Modern Tuscany and Eurasia

Author: Francesco Freddolini

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-06-09

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 100007837X

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This book explores how the Medici Grand Dukes pursued ways to expand their political, commercial, and cultural networks beyond Europe, cultivating complex relations with the Ottoman Empire and other Islamicate regions, and looking further east to India, China, and Japan. The chapters in this volume discuss how casting a global, cross-cultural net was part and parcel of the Medicean political vision. Diplomatic gifts, items of commercial exchange, objects looted at war, maritime connections, and political plots were an inherent part of how the Medici projected their state on the global arena. The eleven chapters of this volume demonstrate that the mobility of objects, people, and knowledge that generated the global interactions analyzed here was not unidirectional—rather, it went both to and from Tuscany. In addition, by exploring evidence of objects produced in Tuscany for Asian markets,this book reveals hitherto neglected histories of how Western cultures projected themselves eastwards.

Daggers and Men's Smiles
Daggers and Men's Smiles

Author: Jill Downie

Publisher: Dundurn

Published: 2011-05-25

Total Pages: 346

ISBN-13: 1554888697

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On the English Channel Island of Guernsey, Detective Inspector Ed Moretti and his new partner, Liz Falla, investigate vicious attacks on Epicure Films. The international production company is shooting a movie based on British bad-boy author Gilbert Ensor’s bestselling novel about an Italian aristocratic family at the end of the Second World War, using fortifications from the German occupation of Guernsey as locations, and the manor house belonging to the expatriate Vannonis. When vandalism escalates into murder, Moretti must resist the attractions of Ensor’s glamorous American wife, Sydney, consolidate his working relationship with Falla, and establish whether the murders on Guernsey go beyond the island. Why is the Marchesa Vannoni in Guernsey? What is the significance of the design that appears on the daggers used as murder weapons, as well as on the Vannoni family crest? And what role does the marchesas statuesque niece, Giulia, who runs the family business and is probably bisexual, really play?

The Merchant Prince
The Merchant Prince

Author: Armin Shimerman

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2000-06-01

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 074341747X

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For seven years, Armin Shimerman played the diminutive entrepreneur Quark on Star Trek. Deep Space Nine®. Now, he teams up with author Michael Scott to chronicle the tale of a diminutive entrepreneur straight out of Earth history: Dr. John Dee. Despite his lack of physical stature, the five-foot-tall Dee was a towering figure in Renaissance Europe: alchemist, necromancer, scientist, philosopher, adviser to royalty, enemy to the vicious de Medici clan -- and confidant of Dyckon, a member of the alien race known as the Roc. Ancient and wise, the Roc have come to Earth to observe the evolution of humanity, not to interfere. But during the course of his studies, Dyckon has come to call John Dee friend. When the de Medicis arrest Dee in Venice, Dyckon chooses to save his friend from prison and leave him in suspended animation until the year 2099. The "philosopher of Albion" wakes in a confusing future where humanity is on the brink of developing the ultimate weapon -- a weapon that will mean the destruction of the human race! The only thing that can prevent Armageddon in the future is a genius from the past -- but can even the great John Dee save humanity from itself?

The World of Renaissance Italy [2 volumes]
The World of Renaissance Italy [2 volumes]

Author: Joseph P. Byrne

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2017-06-22

Total Pages: 843

ISBN-13:

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Students of the Italian Renaissance who wish to go beyond the standard names and subjects will find in this text abundant information on the lives, customs, beliefs, and practices of those who lived during this exciting time period. The World of Renaissance Italy: A Daily Life Encyclopedia engages all of the Italian peninsula from the Black Death (1347–1352) to 1600. Unlike other encyclopedic works about the Renaissance era, this book deals exclusively with Italy, revealing the ways common Italian people lived and experienced the events and technological developments that marked the Renaissance era. The coverage specifically spotlights marginal or traditionally marginalized groups, including women, homosexuals, Jews, the elderly, and foreign communities in Italian cities. The entries in this two-volume set are organized into 10 sections of 25 alphabetically listed entries each. Among the broad sections are art, fashion, family and gender, food and drink, housing and community, politics, recreation and social customs, and war. The "See Also" sources for each article are listed by section for easy reference, a feature that students and researchers will greatly appreciate. The extensive collection of contemporary documents include selections from a diary, letters, a travel journal, a merchant's inventory, Inquisition testimony, a metallurgical handbook, and text by an artist that describes what the author feels constitutes great work. Each of the primary source documents accompanies a specific article and provides an added dimension and degree of insight to the material.

The Fallen Blade
The Fallen Blade

Author: Jon Courtenay Grimwood

Publisher: Orbit

Published: 2011-01-27

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 0316123390

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In the depths of night, customs officers board a galley in a harbor and overpower its guards. In the hold they find oil and silver, and a naked boy chained to the bulkhead. Stunningly beautiful but half-starved, the boy has no name. The officers break the boy's chains to rescue him, but he escapes. Venice is at the height of its power. Duke Marco commands the seas, taxes his colonies, and, like every duke before him, fears assassins better than his own. In a side chapel, Marco's thirteen-year old cousin prays for deliverance from her forced marriage. It is her bad fortune to be there when Moorish pirates break in to steal a chalice, but it is the Moors' good fortune -- they kidnap her and demand ransom from the Duke. As day dawns, Atilo, the Duke's chief assassin, prepares to kill the man who let in the pirates. Having cut the traitor's throat, he turns back, having heard a noise, and finds a stranger crouched over the dying man, drinking blood from the wound. The speed with which the boy dodges a dagger and scales a pillar stuns Atilo. And the assassin knows he has to find the boy. Not to kill him though -- because he's finally found what he thought he would never find. Someone fit to be his apprentice.

One Last Lunch
One Last Lunch

Author: Erica Heller

Publisher: Abrams

Published: 2020-05-12

Total Pages: 455

ISBN-13: 1683358910

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In this heartwarming essay collection, dozens of authors, actors, artists and others imagine one last lunch with someone they cherished. A few years ago, Erica Heller realized how universal the longing is for one more moment with a lost loved one. It could be a parent, a sibling, a mentor, or a friend, but who wouldn’t love the opportunity to sit down, break bread, and just talk? Who wouldn’t jump at the chance to ask those unasked questions, or share those unvoiced feelings? In One Last Lunch, Heller has asked friends and family of authors, artists, musicians, comedians, actors, and others, to recount one such fantastic repast. Muffie Meyer and her documentary subject Little Edie Beale go to a deli in Montreal. Kirk Douglas asks his father what he thought of him becoming an actor. Sara Moulton dines with her friend Julia Child. The Anglican priest George Pitcher has lunch with Jesus. And Heller herself connects with her father, the renowned author Joseph Heller. These richly imagined stories are endlessly revealing, about the subject, the writer, the passage of time, regret, gratitude, and the power of enduring love.