The Dark Heart of Florence by Tasha Alexander (ebook reader screen TXT) 📕

prewar years catalyzed the formation of intelligence services in both countries. One of the great triumphs of the period was that Britain developed its famous dreadnought battleship without the Germans so much as suspecting what their enemy was doing. Berlin, already too aware of Britain’s naval superiority, was taken completely by surprise when its enemy launched the dreadnought in 1906, rendering every other battleship in the world obsolete. During the development of the design, Colin and his colleagues would not have wanted to see the plans fall into German hands.

Darius Benton-Smith is loosely based on Kim Philby, arguably the greatest spy in history. Most secret agents are motivated by money, but Philby was a firm ideologue, believing from his days at Oxford that communism would benefit the British people. His astonishing story is brilliantly told in Ben Macintyre’s A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal. Finally, Colin’s superior, Sir John Burman, is named in honor of John Mortensen Burman, longtime supporter of the Albany County Library in Laramie, Wyoming. He is missed by friends, family, and colleagues every single day.

 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ajmar, Marta, Flora Dennis, and Elizabeth Miller. At Home in Renaissance Italy. London: V&A Publications, 2006.

Albala, Ken. The Banquet: Dining in the Great Courts of Late Renaissance Europe. 2007. Reprint, Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2017.

Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Translated by John D. Sinclair. 1939. Rev. ed., New York: Oxford University Press, 1961.

Bracciolini, Poggio, and Nicolaus de Niccolis. Two Renaissance Book Hunters: The Letters of Poggius Bracciolini to Nicolaus de Niccolis. Translated with notes by Phyllis Walter Goodhart Gordan. New York: Columbia University Press, 1974.

Brown, Alison. The Return of Lucretius to Renaissance Florence. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010.

Cavini, Daniela. Behind the Medici Men: The Ladies. Firenze: Mauro Pagliai, 2018.

Crum, Roger J., and John T. Paoletti, eds. Renaissance Florence: A Social History. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Cutts, Simon. The Translated Latrine Inscriptions of the Palazzo Davanzati. Clonmel, Ireland: Coracle Books, 2015.

French, David. “Spy Fever in Britain, 1900–1915.” Historical Journal 21, no. 2 (June 1978): 355–70, www.jstor.org/stable/2638264; accessed July 17, 2019.

Gaston, Robert W., and Louis A. Waldman, eds. San Lorenzo: A Florentine Church. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017.

Gavitt, Philip. Charity and Children in Renaissance Florence: The Ospedale degli Innocenti, 1410–1536. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990.

Greenblatt, Stephen. The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. New York: W. W. Norton, 2011.

Hibbert, Christopher. Florence: The Biography of a City. New York: W. W. Norton, 1993.

Hollingsworth, Mary. The Family Medici: The Hidden History of the Medici Dynasty. New York: Pegasus Books, 2018.

Klapisch-Zuber, Christiane. Women, Family, and Ritual in Renaissance Italy. Translated by Lydia G. Cochrane. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.

Lee, Alexander. The Ugly Renaissance: Sex, Greed, Violence and Depravity in an Age of Beauty. 2013. Reprint, New York: Doubleday Anchor, 2015.

Levy, Allison. House of Secrets: The Many Lives of a Florentine Palazzo. London: I. B. Tauris, 2019.

Lewis, R. W. B. The City of Florence: Historical Vistas and Personal Sightings. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995.

Lucas-Dubreton, J. Daily Life in Florence in the Time of the Medici. New York: Macmillan, 1961.

Lucretius. On the Nature of Things. Translated by W. H. D. Rouse, revised by Martin F. Smith. 1924. Rev. ed., Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992.

Macintyre, Ben. A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal. 2014. Reprint, New York: Broadway Books, 2015.

Philby, Kim. My Silent War: The Autobiography of a Spy. 1968. Reprint, New York: Modern Library, 2002.

Pisani, Rosanna Caterina Proto. Palazzo Davanzati: A House of Medieval Florence. Edited by Maria Grazia Vaccari. Firenze; Milano: Giunti, 2011.

Servadio, Gaia. Renaissance Woman. London: I. B. Tauris, 2016.

Stafford, David A. T. “Spies and Gentlemen: The Birth of the British Spy Novel, 1893–1914.” Victorian Studies 24, no. 4 (Summer 1981): 489–509, www.jstor.org/stable/3827226, accessed July 17, 2019.

Staikos, Konstantinos. The Great Libraries: From Antiquity to the Renaissance. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press; London: British Library, 2000.

Staley, John Edgcumbe. The Guilds of Florence. London: Methuen, 1906.

Stapleford, Richard, ed. and trans. Lorenzo de’ Medici at Home: The Inventory of the Palazzo Medici in 1492. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013.

Strathern, Paul. The Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance. London: Jonathan Cape, 2003.

________. The Medici: Power, Money, and Ambition in the Italian Renaissance. 2016. Reprint, New York: Pegasus Books, 2017.

Todorow, Maria Fossi, ed. Palazzo Davanzati. Firenze: Becocci, 1979.

Trexler, Richard C. Public Life in Renaissance Florence. 1980. Reprint, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996.

Welch, Evelyn S. Art and Society in Italy: 1350–1500. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Witthoft, Brucia. “Marriage Rituals and Marriage Chests in Quattrocento Florence.” Artibus et Historiae 3, no. 5 (1982): 43–59, www.jstor.org/stable/1483143; accessed October 10, 2019.

ALSO BY TASHA ALEXANDER

In the Shadow of Vesuvius

Uneasy Lies the Crown

Death in St. Petersburg

A Terrible Beauty

The Adventuress

The Counterfeit Heiress

Behind the Shattered Glass

Death in the Floating City

A Crimson Warning

Dangerous to Know

Tears of Pearl

A Fatal Waltz

A Poisoned Season

And Only to Deceive

Elizabeth: The Golden Age

 About the Author

Tasha Alexander is the author of the New York Times bestselling Lady Emily mystery series. The daughter of two philosophy professors, she studied English Literature and Medieval History at the University of Notre Dame. She and her husband, novelist Andrew Grant, live on a ranch in southeastern Wyoming. You can sign up for email updates here.

    

Thank you for buying this

St. Martin’s Press ebook.

To receive special offers, bonus content,

and info on new releases and other great reads,

sign up for our newsletters.

Or visit us online at

us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup

For email updates on the author, click here.

 Contents

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Dedication

Epigraph

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Acknowledgments

Author’s Note

Bibliography

Also by Tasha Alexander

About the Author

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

First published in the United States by Minotaur Books, an