I love this series. I am primarily a mystery reader, and this is a series for those of you who are looking for something new must try. Hannah Wolfe is tough yet feminine and real. This is a great series for those who enjoy a good mystery that is not too cosy or hard boiled. Hannah is sort of a free-lance detective in London, but she travels all over. She is human but never a pathetic victim. Unlike many mystery authors today, Dunant never lets the stories get too dark in order to seem real. This is the second in the series with the first being Birth Marks. I recommend this series for those who might also like Anna Lee from Liza Cody. Hannah matures with each new installment and I'm waiting for the fourth.

Private detective Hannah Wolfe is not too pleased with her newest job -- chaperoning rebellious teenager Mattie Shepherd around London for a day. Mattie was supposed to spend the day with her father, a scientist and workaholic who calls Hannah to babysit so he can finish up some work. Mattie resents her father for deserting her, and takes her feelings out on Hannah. Their day is already off to a bad start when Mattie is killed by a bomb that has been planted in her father's car. Who's the culprit? Animal rights activists, Mattie's boyfriend, or someone else entirely? It's up to Hannah to deal with her own feelings of guilt over Mattie's death and then to find Mattie's murderer. What at first seems to be a deceptively simple case turns out to be a much larger puzzle. Sarah Dunant's writing is crisp and clear. Her protagonist, Hannah Wolfe, is witty and liberal. Her definite attitude enlivens the story, making Fatlands a highly readable, and highly recommended, book.

Sarah Dunant has created, quite simply, a beautiful and engaging novel about art and Florence. At its heart, The Birth of Venus is a story of longing and love, but the multilayered poltical, religious and familial storylines bring a richness to the reader that no ordinary romantic story could possibly deliver. Add to that a subtle discourse of gender roles and some history of the Florentine art movement and The Birth of Venus is a sure winner.

Alessandra is the youngest daughter of a well-heeled family in Medici Florence of the late fifteenth century. She has a passion for learning (typically not encouraged in women of the time), a blossoming artistic talent and no interest in fulfilling her typical role and getting married. She just wants to be free of society's constraints so she can paint.

Then, when a young and reticent painter arrives to paint the frescoes on her family's chapel, her life begins to change irrevocably. Against the backdrop of a Florence where religious fundamentalism and a brutal crackdown on art and luxury are changing the face of the city, Alessandra finds herself caught between her own interests and society's expectations.

With an extraordinary sense of character and a writing style that brings and immediacy, vibrancy and life to Florence, Sarah Dunant has penned a truly remarkable novel that should stand for years as the premier novel of Florence and art.

The Birth of Venus is a fun, engaging and wonderful novel. Highly recommended for fans of history, art, Italy or human drama.

Hannah Wolfe is a private eye on a simple job to a health farm. Who is tampering the hot bats? Who replaces the massage oil with something nasty? It is all quickley revealed to make way for the real problem: the owner of the farm is married to an surgeon and something went wrong during the last six months of the marriage. One of the blurbs on the UK edition says: "the plot is crowded like a traffic jam." And it shure is!

This is a book in the best english/US tradition. Not too many pages (very english), not to many but some red herrings, a little love, some personal problems and an almost happy end. It is surely not the best i've read but is quite enjoyable.

I'd definitely give the writing 5 stars for pacing, plotline, and character development, but I found the ending to be unsatisfying in the extreme -- I kept going back so much that I probably read the book twice, looking for the hook to tell me what "really" happened to Anna. That said, the story of what went on at "home" while she was "away" is engrossing and enjoyable, as is the parallel story track taking place in Italy.

Anna Franklin's "strategy for revitalization" involves an impulsive trip to Florence, Italy where she expects to rendezvous with her recently acquired part-time lover. Anna goes missing, and back home in London, those closest to her -- Paul, loyal friend and surrogate father to Anna's daughter Lily, aged six, and Estella, her long-time best friend -- are becoming increasingly anxious, worried -- and puzzled. "Mapping the Edge" is both a suspense story and a study of relationships. As a suspense story, the author borrows a premise used so effectively in some of Hitchcock's films: The innocent caught in the web of the villain's machinations; the dupe ensnared by the duper. On another level, the book explores relationships: between women and men, women and women, men and men, adults and children, the victim and the victimizer. Author Dunant accomplishes all this by filling the reader's plate with a clever device: two scenarios of what might have happened to Anna. In this author's hands, it is done skillfully and entertainingly, and the resolutions are plausible. If you're a bedtime reader, expect a late night when the engaging mixture of a suspenseful plot and intriguing characters seduces you.

"Mapping the Edge" is a disturbing novel about a woman in crisis. Anna is a single parent who is devoted to her six-year-old daughter, but she still feels a deep void in her life. The book centers around Anna's disappearance during a trip to Italy. Anna's friends, Paul and Stella, look after Lily during her mother's absence, but Anna has not returned when she was expected. As the days pass, Anna's friends fear that something has happened to her. Has she been abducted or is she staying away voluntarily for reasons of her own? In a series of chapters that move back and forth in time and place, the author explores Anna's past and the way that it intersects with her present life. Dunant's sensitive dialogue and psychological insights expose Anna's fear and vulnerability. "Mapping the Edge" is an engrossing novel of suspense that shows how modern women struggle to have it all, but must often settle for much less.

This book is crap. I initially thought the book must have been written by a man as there is NO WAY the protagonist (or any woman for that matter) would react to a rapist in this way. Sorry Sarah, but if this is the best you can do, I certainly won't be reading any more of your work.

This book starts off very intriguing. Book translator Lizzie starts to notice CD's missing in her house. She thinks nothing of it as her ex boyfriend has a key to the house still. However, once he returns the key and the stereo continues to turn itself on and off and dishes move from the cupboards to the table, she begins to wonder if it's more of a poltergeist problem.

Until the night she wakes up and hears another person breathing in her bedroom.....

The story Lizzie is translating throughout the book is cheap, nasty and degrading, but I found it necessary as an explanation for Lizzie's behaviour. Despite the necessity, I still found the transcript quite boring, and it was only in retrospect that I began to believe Lizzie's emotions at the end of the story. "Mapping the Edge" is a much better book from this author.

When I bought BIRTH MARKS, by Sarah Dunant, I thought I have read the best detective book of the world. I haven't read all the detective books of the world, but I know that I really read one of the best ones ever written. After loving so much this book, I couldn't resist but pick another piece of the same writer. And, as she showed me once, Sarah is just one of these authors whose books you're never tired of (although she doesn't respond to your letters if you write her. No problem: one day she'll ask for MY autographs and I won't give any to her! Nobody is perfect. Who cares...) :)

But, much different from the book mentioned, we're not talking about a detective book here. TRANSGRESSIONS is much more than that. It has power, a good plot and, the most interesting of all: it's well written because the writer has criated her own style. She knows exactly how to keep the reader on the edge the whole book, without start to seem dizzy. It's not the kind of summer reading because that's not "just one more novel". It's a triumph.

Marco Aurelio