Twelve-year-old Bianca feels like the luckiest girl in Venice. She's apprenticed to the most famous painter in the world - Annunzio di Lombardi - and she's learning all the tricks of the trade in the most glamorous and powerful place in the city: the Duchess' Palace. But one night disaster strikes. Bianca's beloved Lombardi is given a poisoned cup of wine at a party, and collapses - but not before giving Bianca a magical paintbrush, which allows her to travel through hidden doorways throughout the city. Bianca will have to use all of her pluck, courage and cunning to find out who tried to hurt her master - and to discover what is wrong with the Duchess, who is behaving very strangely indeed...The Last Apprentice is a delightful and exciting mystery perfect for middle-grade readers looking for feisty heroines, sinister baddies and a good dash of magic and suspense.

Only three weeks have passed since the treacherous Filpepi and the Baron tried to depose Duchess Catriona, and although they seem to have disappeared forever, Bianca can't stop worrying about where they might be and what lies beyond her old master's magical paintings. Her friends are still full of adventure though, and there is also the very important business of running di Lombardi's studio to attend to! But her new responsibilities as Head of the Royal Studios are hard, and she is puzzled by the strange messages di Lombardi still seems to be sending her from beyond the grave. What is the meaning of the medallion and magical paint mix he left her in his will? And why does she keep finding herself in a strange, yet completely familiar city at night? Why is she so at home there - and who is the beautiful lady who looks a lot like Bianca? Bianca will have to be at her plucky, bright and adventurous best if she wants to find the answers to all the mysteries lurking in the dark city of Oscurita...

It is a dangerous time to be a citizen of the beautiful and enchanting city of La Luminosa. Bianca knows that an attack from the city's sinister twin, Oscurita, is coming any minute, but no one believes her, and she is forced to watch as the Duchess Catriona's court is tricked into an alliance with Duchess Edita's. Soon the magical barriers that keep the two cities apart begin to disintegrate, and the true nature of the villainous Edita is revealed. Paintings begin to flood with water from the dark city's canals, and it seems Bianca and her magical paintbrush may be the only ones who can save La Luminosa. But with her mother still trapped in Oscurita, and her own loyalties tested to breaking point at home, just whose side will Bianca find herself on in the battles of the painted war?