European Crime

The iconoclastic writer and director of the revered classic Withnail & I—"The funniest British film of all time" (Esquire)—returns to London in a decade-long examination of the most provocative murder investigation in British history, and finally solves the identity of the killer known as...

This harrowing tale of early twentieth century New York reveals the true stories of an immigrant underworld, a secret vice squad, and the rise of organized crime. In the early 1900s, prior to World War I, New York City was a vortex of vice and corruption. On the Lower East Side, then the most...

On a luminous spring day in Venice, Commissario Guido Brunetti and Inspector Vianello play hooky to help get Vianello’s friend Marco Ribetti—an environmental activist arrested during a protest against toxic waste being dumped into the city’s waters—released from prison. But on the steps...

It’s Midsummer’s Eve, the celebration of the longest day of the year, and on Sandhamn it’s the longest party of the year. But the fun comes to a dead halt when a young reveler is murdered, a teenage girl is found drugged and dazed on the beach, and other young women vanish. So far, what links the victims is a mystery. For Nora Linde and her new boyfriend, Jonas Sköld, the crimes are personal: one of the missing girls is Wilma, Jonas’s daughter. And her disappearance could test Nora and Jonas’s relationship in ways they never expected.

America’s leading religious scholar and public intellectual introduces lay readers to the Qur’an with a measured, powerful reading of the ancient text Garry Wills has spent a lifetime thinking and writing about Christianity. In What the Qur’an Meant, Wills invites readers to join him as he...

Venetian detective Commissario Guido Brunetti is called to investigate the death of a young cadet. The boy has been found hanged, a presumed suicide, in Venice's elite military academy. Brunetti's sorrow for the boy, so close in age to his own son, is rivaled only by his contempt for a community...

“A stunning novel, the best of this brilliant series, with a twist at the end that will leave even the most sophisticated reader gasping.” —The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Donna Leon’s bestselling series featuring the principled, warmhearted Venetian Commissario Guido Brunetti has won her...

A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF 2025 An adrenaline-fueled thriller about a disgraced comedian-turned-politician who takes on the role of a lifetime: infiltrating a corrupt Eastern European country to spy on their brutal dictator Hal Knight, a comedian and movie star-turned politician, is no...

“Commissario Guido Brunetti’s fourteenth case may be his best yet.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) On a cold Venetian night shortly before Christmas, a street vendor is killed in a scuffle in Campo San Stefano. The closest witnesses to the event are the tourists who had been browsing...

In the early months of World War I, on Christmas Eve, men on both sides of the trenches laid down their arms and joined in a spontaneous celebration. Despite orders to continue shooting, the unofficial truce spread across the front lines. Even the participants found what they were doing...

When the body of a man is found in a canal, damaged by the tides, carrying no wallet, and wearing only one shoe, Commissario Guido Brunetti has little to work with. No local has filed a missing-person report, and no hotel guests have disappeared. With Inspector Vianello, Brunetti canvasses shoe...

When the body of a wealthy elderly woman is found, brutally murdered in her Venetian flat, the police suspect her maid, who has disappeared. As the runaway maid’s train is leaving Italy for Romania, she is approached by the border police, runs away, and is killed as she crosses the tracks in...

This biography of Victoria highlights the many dramas of her life. For example, she was fatherless at eight months and treated poorly by her family, but survived to become the only English queen comparable to Elizabeth I. The character of Victoria herself, stubborn and vital, is also drawn out...

The Angel Makers is a true-crime story like no other—a 1920s midwife who may have been the century’s most prolific killer leading a murder ring of women responsible for the deaths of at least 160 men. The horror occurred in a rustic farming enclave in modern-day Hungary. To look at the...

From “the undisputed crime fiction queen” (The Baltimore Sun), one of Commissario Guido Brunetti’s most enigmatic cases: leading Donna Leon’s iconic detective from the local dry cleaner all the way to Vienna’s most elite aristocrats. Over the years, Donna Leon’s bestselling...

A fascinating and counterintuitive portrait of the sordid, hidden world behind the dazzling artwork of Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli, and more Renowned as a period of cultural rebirth and artistic innovation, the Renaissance is cloaked in a unique aura of beauty and brilliance...

In the seventeenth novel in Donna Leon’s bestselling Commissario Guido Brunetti series, Brunetti investigates two groups—a Christian sect, and the gypsies—and tries to understand the tragic death of a young girl. When a friend of Commissario Guido Brunetti’s brother, a priest recently...

Big Little Lies set in World War II era Greenwich Village! An irresistible, suspenseful novel about four women who marry into an elegant, prosperous Italian family, and then must take charge of the family’s business when their husbands are forced to...

In Donna Leon’s brilliant twentieth mystery, Brunetti must prove that all is not what it seems in the death of an elderly widow. Late one night, Brunetti is called away from dinner to investigate the death of a widow in her modest apartment. Though there are some signs of a struggle, the...

Gertrud and her foster sister, Hanna, used to be inseparable. But as the years pass, Hanna becomes the beautiful one while Gertrud remains plain. Their once unbreakable bond is strained by jealousy - until Gertrud is brutally murdered and Hanna disappears without a trace.