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 Guiliana commits the fatal mistake of revealing the secret to her fiancé Enrico and a sequence of devastating consequences unravels. 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.

Dreaming of a city with flying horses was one thing... But coming face to face with someone she knew to be dead - that was something else again. Georgia would love nothing more than to ride horses every day and avoid her annoying stepbrother at all costs. But she could never have guessed that a tiny, antique winged horse figurine would be the key to her escape to another world and another time. When Georgia arrives in a sixteenth-century city called Remora, she is plunged into a dangerous and treacherous world of horse-racing, family honour and deadly rivalry. And there, as a new Stravagante, Georgia will have a dramatic and extraordinary role to play...

Sky stepped out into the sunshine, blinking, still holding the bottle, and a black man, robed like the others, took him by the arm and whispered, 'God be praised, it has found you!' Everything changes for Sky when he finds a perfume bottle that whiskes him away to the city of Giglia, an ancient city similar to Florence. This may be the beautiful City of Flowers, but things that seems beautiful might also be deadly. As a new Stravagante - someone who can travel through space and time with the help of a talisman - Sky finds himself caught up in a deadly feud between Giglia's two ruling families. Now, the Stravaganti must do all they can to avoid further bloodshed as politics, conspiracy and espionage unfold.

Stravaganza City of Secrets

The acclaimed Stravaganza series delivers a thrilling story packed with action, drama—and pirates! The new instalment in the critically acclaimed Stravaganza series transports readers to a world much like our own—but where magic and piracy come to life in the Italian town of Classe. The new Stravagante is Isabel, a visitor from our world who befriends Flavia, a successful female merchant of spices, silks, and tapestries. But Flavia soon finds herself an outcast and a pirate, while Isabel learns that Classe is under threat of attack by the fierce Gate people. What can she do to help save the city? Fans of fantasy and historical fiction alike who have flocked to the Stravaganza series will welcome this action-packed adventure, which can be read alone or as a companion to the previous novels.

Desperately unhappy, Laura has resorted to self-harming. But Laura is a Stravagante, somebody who can travel in time and space. When she finds her talisman, a small silver dagger, she stravagates to 16th-century Fortezza, a town similar to Lucca in Italy, where she meets her Stravagante, who is a swordsmith.