Seven of the best Venetian reads

Judith Mackrell's latest book is The Unfinished Palazzo. One of her favorite books inspired by Venice, as shared at the Waterstones blog:

In the Company of the Courtesan by Sarah Dunant

This is the second novel in Sarah Dunnant’s excellently researched trilogy about the lives of women in Renaissance Italy, and it focuses on the adventures of Fiammetta, a buccaneering and beautiful courtesan. Dunnant tells a rollicking good story , but the novel’s power lies in its vivid recreation of the Venetian world of Fiammetta and her fellow courtesans, a community of women who were renowned for their wit and learning, and who were intimate with both sides of 16th century Venice - the city’s shimmering luxury and its dark underbelly of poverty and plague.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue