Donna Leon's riveting novel, Doctored Evidence, takes us through the winding streets of contemporary Venice as Commissario Guido Brunetti delves into a case his superiors would rather leave closed.

When a miserly spinster is found brutally murdered in her Venice apartment, the police immediately suspect her Romanian housekeeper. They believe their job is done after the immigrant dies while fleeing arrest. However, weeks later, a neighbor comes forward to defend the innocence of the accused. The only investigator who believes the alibi is Brunetti, who must work behind the backs of his superiors to vindicate the Romanian and uncover the true killer.

As always, the indispensable hacking skills of the ever-loyal Signorina Elettra complement Brunetti's meticulous detective work. She uncovers mysterious deposits in the old woman's bank account, but who made them? As Brunetti investigates, his wife reads him teachings on the Seven Deadly Sins. In a modern world filled with intrigue and nebulous morality, how do they relate to the murder at hand?

Doctored Evidence is charged with suspense and evokes a contemporary Venice with Donna Leon's masterful flair.

Lucien is seriously ill, but his life is transformed when an old Italian notebook gives him the power to become a stravagante, a time traveller with access to 16th century Italy. He wakes up in Bellezza (Venice) during carnival time and meets Arianna, a girl his own age who is disguised as a boy in the hope of being selected as one of the Duchessa's mandoliers.

Arianna gives Lucien her boy's clothing, and he is selected as a mandolier himself, becoming a friend of fellow-stravagante Rodolfo, the Duchessa's lover, and saving the Duchessa's life when she is threatened by an assassin hired by the powerful di Chimici family.

For state occasions, the Duchessa uses her maid Giuliana as a body-double, but Giuliana commits the fatal mistake of revealing the secret to her fiancé Enrico, leading to a sequence of devastating consequences.

Meanwhile, Lucien has met the original stravagante, the Elizabethan alchemist William Dethridge, and he begins to understand that he may be called to follow in his footsteps.