City of Love, City of Regret? For Annabel Hanson, Venice was a city of bittersweet memory. It was here that she'd fallen head over heels for Simon, the handsome surgeon who'd passionately swept into her life and made her his bride. It was here she'd learned to love…and to live. And it was here she'd returned to heal after the tragic death of their infant daughter and the breakup of their marriage. Determined to reignite the still-smoldering embers of their relationship, Simon Pacino boldly pursued his estranged wife to the city that had once brought them together—in the hope that despite what had gone on between them, the city could work its magic once more….

An inspector rages against the announcement that police HQ is to relocate – the way so many of the city’s residents already have – to the mainland... An aspiring author struggles with the inexorable creep of rentalisation that has forced him to share his apartment, and life, with ‘global pilgrims’... An ageing painter rails against the liberties taken by tourists, but finds his anger undermined by his own childhood memories of the place... The Venice presented in these stories is a far cry from the ‘impossibly beautiful’, frozen-in-time city so familiar to the thousands who flock there every year – a city about which, Henry James once wrote, ‘there is nothing new to be said.’ Instead, they represent the other Venice, the one tourists rarely see: the real, everyday city that Venetians have to live and work in. Rather than a city in stasis, we see it at a crossroads, fighting to regain its radical, working-class soul, regretting the policies that have seen it turn slowly into a theme park, and taking the pandemic as an opportunity to rethink what kind of city it wants to be.

Spanning more than 75 years of espionage writing in USA and the UK, here are gripping tales by classic writers in the field including W. Somerset Maugham, Ian Fleming, Leslie Charteris, and Erle Stanley Gardner. They are presented complete and unabridged. Among the now legendary fictional secret agents, counterspies and double agents featured are Somerset Maugham's enigmatic operative Ashenden; Ian Fleming's legendary 007; and Peter O'Donnell's Modesty Blaise, 'the female James Bond'. The stories include: The formula for a deadly warfare chemical propels secret agent Peter Baron on a mission through Italy - in Deep Sleep by Bruce Cassiday Agent 007 James Bond confronts military intrigue in the Caribbean - in Octopussy, by Ian Fleming International conspiracy, assassination, bombs, plot and counter-plot in Washington D.C. - in Dealers in Doom by William E. Barrett Someone is out to destroy the British Government, from the inside - in The Spoilers, by Michael Gilbert The CIA enlists a small-town policeman to track down a spy who will stop at nothing to preserve his identity - in The People of the Peacock, by Edward D. Hoch

Angry when her husband backs out of their second honeymoon in Paris, Lara, a fortysomething woman whose marriage is falling apart, asks the thirty-two-year-old construction worker repairing her deck to accompany her on the trip.

A photo documentary about the amazing but endangered culture of Venice Beach

In this award-winning thriller by the New York Times bestselling author, a rescue specialist out to save a fellow vet uncovers an explosive conspiracy. Hostage rescue specialist Jonathan Grave doesn’t surprise easily. But he finds it hard to believe that a fellow combat vet has gone rogue, killing American agents and leaking sensitive intel to hostile foreign interests. With black ops assassins on the trail of his old friend, Grave sets out to get to him first…and finds far more than he bargained for. Catching up with the wily operative puts Grave on the trail of a dangerous and far-reaching conspiracy. Worst of all, the unthinkable tragedy at its center is in-motion. Now Grave and his elite team of specialists must expose a deadly high-level secret —and do it in time to avert a catastrophe of historic proportions. An International Thriller Writers Award Winner

A young American’s life in Europe comes apart in this Man Booker Prize long-listed debut with “echoes of Ford Madox Ford and F. Scott Fitzgerald” (Tom Penn, The Times Literary Supplement, UK). Set in London and Venice at the end of the twentieth century, The Honeymoon follows a young man’s journey into his own past and the strange events that caused his life to unravel. American-born Gordon Garraty spent much of his childhood traveling through the capitals of Europe with his eccentric mother Maureen. As Maureen worked on her interminable art guide, Gordon recorded their journeys with his camera. Only later, while working in London as a freelance photographer, did Gordon begin to emerge from his mother’s influence—and meet Annie. Several years his senior and the daughter of a North London cabbie, Annie is Gordon’s first love—and after a dizzying courtship, his wife. But when they take a honeymoon in Venice, Gordon and Annie are accompanied by Maureen and her new Swiss fiancé. The brilliance of the city seems to distort rather than illuminate. Jealousy, suspicion, and conflicting desires rise to a palpable intensity before a single act of absurd but devastating violence lays bare the emptiness at the core of their gilded lives. A deeply observant and expertly crafted tale, “The Honeymoon looks askance upon the beautiful and splendid, plumbing the stilted emotional depths of two wayward Americans who appear to have arrived via Henry James into the late 1980’s” (Los Angeles Times).