Clever and witty art history-mystery featuring scholar and sleuth Jonathon Argyll, from the author of the bestselling masterpiece 'An Instance of the Fingerpost'. A tip-off without any names and a theft with no obvious motive - these are the apparently innocuous matters currently in the hands of Flavia di Stefano of Rome's Art Theft Squad. Flavia is able to disturb the looters of the monastery in San Giovanni but not catch them. And it's a good thing that nothing valuable was stolen because neither she nor art dealer Jonathan Argyll have a clue who the culprits were. Maybe the truth lies with the item they did get away with - not the disputed Caravaggio the monastery is known for, but a curious icon of the Madonna that is said to have strange powers. Such claims are pure folklore, surely... but then a connection is made to a French dealer found floating in the Tiber a few days later and suddenly things don't seem so frivolous. Perhaps the icon was what the thieves wanted - and is it possible that its powers are miraculous enough to kill for?

Witty and clever art history-mystery featuring Jonathan Argyll, from the author of the bestselling masterpiece 'An Instance of the Fingerpost'. General Bottando of Rome's Art Theft Squad is in trouble: his theory that a single master criminal, dubbed 'Giotto', is behind a string of major art thefts has aroused the scorn of his arch enemy and rival, the bureaucrat Corrado Argan. He needs a result, and the confession of a dying woman may just provide the vital clue. In pursuit of the elusive Giotto, Bottando's colleague, Flavia di Stefano, sets off hotfoot for Florence, and English art dealer Jonathan Argyll is dispatched to London and then on to rural Norfolk - only to discover a body and a mystery which could lead to the greatest art find of his career...

Clever Italian art-history crime series featuring scholar and dealer Jonathon Argyll, from the author of the best-selling masterpiece 'An Instance of the Fingerpost'. The hardest part of being an art dealer is having to sell your beloved works. For Jonathan Argyll, the pain is soothed when an American billionaire agrees to pay a vast sum for a relatively minor piece. Arriving in the Californian sunshine eager to collect his cheque, Jonathan bumps into one of his less scrupulous colleagues, and discovers he is not the American's only seller. A bust of Pope Pius V is being smuggled out of Italy, and trouble is following in its wake. Within hours, Jonathan's billionaire is dead and both the smuggler and his bust have gone missing. Thinking things can't get any worse, Jonathan calls for the help of the Italian Art Theft Squad - and instead finds himself the killer's next target...

Clever and witty art history-mystery featuring Jonathon Argyll, scholar and sleuth, from the bestselling author of 'An Instance of the Fingerpost'. How do you resolve a scandalous kidnapping without paying the ransom or attracting any attention? It's not a question Flavia di Stefano, acting head of the Italian Art Theft Squad, would normally need to answer. Unfortunately, the Italian prime minister is asking it. As Flavia begins a desperate search for the Claude Lorrain landscape, snatched while on loan from the Louvre, her husband embarks on a rather more leisurely quest. Jonathan Argyll is keen to discover the provenance of a small Renaissance painting, titled The Immaculate Conception, as a favour to its owner. His enthusiasm wanes when the investigation brings him into unexpected danger. There's no turning back, though, and soon husband and wife are uncovering shocking secrets that will bring them into the path of some very dangerous enemies indeed...

Witty Italian art-history crime series featuring English dealer Jonathan Argyll, from the author of the best-selling literary masterpiece, 'An Instance of the Fingerpost'. Membership of the prestigious Titian Committee is normally considered a high honour. Normally, that is, until two of its members end up dead and someone seems to be taking the idea of backstabbing a little too far. Flavia de Stefano of Rome's Art Theft Squad is sent to find out why. She calls upon the help of dealer Jonathan Argyll, in Venice to buy a picture from the Marchesa di Mulino. But the sudden theft of the Marchesa's collection sets Flavia and Jonathan on a tortuous trail to uncover the truth. A further death threatens the very survival of the Committee itself, as well as offering the tantalizing possibility of an undiscovered Titian - a mysterious composition that may have been suppressed for 'moral' reasons....

First in the Italian art-history crime series featuring English dealer and sleuth Jonathan Argyll, from the author of the best-selling masterpiece 'An Instance of the Fingerpost'. Flavia di Stefano is the kind of Italian beauty that art dealer Jonathon Argyll doesn't normally get to meet in his line of work. But, it turns out, all he had to do was get caught breaking into one of Rome's churches - for Flavia is the Art Theft officer tasked with interviewing Jonathon. A strange way to meet, perhaps, but then Jonathon has an even stranger tale to tell. His claim that the church contains a lost classic, hidden under another painting, is treated with cautious scepticism. But when the picture first vanishes, then turns up in the hands of a British art dealer claiming it's a newly discovered Raphael, it's clear there's more to it than meets the eye. When vandalism is followed by murder, it's up to Jonathan and Flavia to discover just how much more - a quest for the true nature of a painting with a lethal history...

Three interlocking worlds. Four people looking for answers. April, 1960: In the cellar of a professor's house in Oxford, fifteen-year-old Rosie goes in search of a missing cat -- and instead finds herself in a different world. Anterwold is a sun-drenched land of storytellers and prophecies. But is this world real -- and what happens if Rosie decides to stay? Meanwhile, a rebellious scientist is trying to prove that time does not even exist -- with potentially devastating consequences. As the three worlds come together, one question arises: who controls the future -- or the past...?

Witty Italian art-history crime series featuring English dealer Jonathan Argyll, from the author of the best-selling literary masterpiece, 'An Instance of the Fingerpost'. Paris can do strange things to a man's mind... like making him agree to an apparently harmless favour of escorting a picture to Rome. 'The Death of Socrates' is a particularly nondescript piece, so art dealer Jonathan Argyll can sympathize when its recipient refuses to accept delivery. But in an unusual twist, the same man is found dead a few hours later. Surely the painting wasn't that bad? Now caught up in a murder investigation, Jonathan recalls an attempt to steal the artwork while he was at the train station. Could this be the killer? The bodies start piling up and Jonathan must uncover the dark wartime secret at the heart of the mystery - before someone puts him out of the picture for good.

We are in Oxford in the 1660s - a time, and place, of great intellectual, scientific, religious and political ferment. Robert Grove, a fellow of New College is found dead in suspicious circumstances. A young woman is accused of his murder. We hear about the events surrounding his death from four witnesses: Marco da Cola, a Venetian Catholic intent on claiming credit for the invention of blood transfusion; Jack Prescott, the son of a supposed traitor to the Royalist cause determined to vindicate his father; John Wallis, chief cryptographer to both Cromwell and Charles II, a mathematician, theologican and inveterate plotter; and Anthony Wood, the famous Oxford antiquary. Each witness tells their version of what happened. Only one reveals the extraordinary truth.

An Instance of the Fingerpost is a magnificent tour de force: an utterly compelling historical mystery story with a plot that twists and turns and keeps the reader guessing until the very last page.

This collection brings together some of Sherlock Holmes earliest cases which appeared in the Strand magazine in 1892 and 1893. The stories here take place the now-familiar Holmsian stomping ground: the foggy streets of London, the docks, the cocaine dens, and the new suburbs as Holmes and Dr Watson grapple with the extremes of treachery, duplicity and evil. Together they solve some of their most intriguing cases including 'The Speckled Band', 'The Scandal in Bohemia', 'The Silver Blaze', and 'The Final Problem'.

"Justly praised for his complex historical thrillers ("An Instance of the Fingerpost; The Dream of Scipio"), Pears scales down to a simple tale of vengeance told by a narrator obsessed with destroying the man he once called his friend and mentor."--"Publishers Weekly."

John Stone, a man so wealthy that in the years before World War One he was able to manipulate markets, industries and indeed whole countries and continents, has been found dead in mysterious circumstances. His beautiful young widow commissions a journalist to carry out an unusual bequest in his will but as he begins his research he soon discovers a story far more complex than he could have ever imagined...As the story moves backwards through time, from London in 1909 to Paris in 1809, before concluding in Venice in 1867, the mystery of John Stone's life and loves begins to unravel. The result is a spellbinding novel that is both a quest for the truth, a love story that spans decades and a compelling murder mystery.

"It is 1663, and England is wracked with intrigue and civil strife. When an Oxford don is murdered, it seems at first that the incident can have nothing to do with great matters of church and state....Yet, little is as it seems in this gripping novel, which dramatizes the ways in which witnesses can see the same events yet remember them falsely. Each of four narrators--a Venetian medical student, a young man intent on proving his late father innocent of treason, a cryptographer, and an archivist--fingers a different culprit...an erudite and entertaining tour de force." --People

Iain Pears combines "articulate characters and erudite art commentary" (The New York Times Book Review) in this sophisticated, suspenseful series featuring art historian Jonathan Argyll and the delightfully clever Flavia di Stefano.

In The Titian Committee, the two embark on a daring investigation after a member of a famous research committee is found dead in a Venetian public garden.

"Deliciously literate" (Kirkus Reviews) and filled with "articulate characters and erudite art commentary" (The New York Times Book Review), this acclaimed series of novels by Iain Pears combines art and history, literature and mystery fiction, with the same passion for detail he displayed in his New York Times bestseller An Instance of the Fingerpost. In The Raphael Affair, the first book in the series, we are introduced to Jonathan Argyll, an enthusiastic young art scholar from England who has followed his suspicions about a long-lost Raphael painting to a small church in Rome. Not only is the painting in question gone from the site, it has been swiftly purchased, restored, auctioned, and installed in Rome's National Museum. But when the recovered Raphael is just as swiftly destroyed in a fire, Argyll begins to suspect its authenticity…and the innocence of every person in its path.

In The Dream of Scipio, the acclaimed author of An Instance of the Fingerpost intertwines three intellectual mysteries, three love stories—and three of the darkest moments in human history. United by a classical text called "The Dream of Scipio," three men struggle to find refuge from the madness that surrounds them...in the final days of the Roman Empire, in the grim years of the Black Death, and in the direst hours of World War II.