Valentina Riccardi is many things: beautiful, cultured, deadly. As one of Venice’s famous courtesans, she’s perfectly positioned to seduce powerful men, get them alone, and assassinate them. Spies. Traitors. Who they are doesn’t matter—only that they made an enemy of the Council of Ten, the shadowy and seemingly omniscient power from which Valentina takes her orders without question. Venice is her home, and after losing everything once before to an invading army, there's nothing she won’t do to protect her city, for there's nothing she loves more. Almost nothing. She vowed to never fall in love again, but Valentina can’t help but give her heart to Bastiano Bragadin, a fellow assassin. But when Bastiano starts asking the wrong questions, Valentina receives a new assignment: kill him. Yet the more Valentina learns about the Council of Ten, the more she wonders if they're truly acting in the interest of the Venetian state or if they're using her for their own dark ambitions. If Valentina is to save Bastiano, she must untangle their conspiracy—with the help of her fellow courtesans—before it’s too late. The Assassin of Venice is a captivating, sensual novel that brings 16th-century Venice to life and draws on the fascinating real history of both Venetian cortigiane oneste—“honest courtesans”—and Renaissance Venice’s sprawling intelligence service.
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Alyssa Palombo is the author of The Violinist of Venice and The Most Beautiful Woman in Florence. She has published short fiction pieces in Black Lantern magazine and the Great Lakes Review. She is a graduate of Canisius College with degrees in English and creative writing.
Nicol Zanzarella is an Earphones Award–winning audiobook narrator and a theater and television actress. She has appeared in productions of Richard III, Romeo and Juliet, The Winter’s Tale, Cousin Bette, Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, and many others.