Akron Public Library

Discover how multifaceted artists, skilled as painters, sculptors and architects, presented new ideas about perspective, harmony and beauty. Explore the culutral centers of Italy and Northern Europe and the artists who made them famous--from Donatello and Leonardo da Vinci to Van Eyck and Durer.

Night after night, a ghost appears in the royal castle of Pergamontio, terrifying the princess. Mangus the Magician doesn't believe in ghosts, but still the King charges him with finding this one and freeing his daughter from its torment. If he can't, Mangus will pay with his life. The magician's only hope is his faithful, street-smart servant boy, Fabrizio, who must solve the mystery of the ghost using logic and reason -- and a bit of magic of his...

In the winter of 1417, a short, genial, cannily alert man in his late thirties plucked a very old manuscript off a dusty shelf in a remote monastery, saw with excitement what he had discovered, and ordered that it be copied. He was Poggio Bracciolini, the greatest book hunter of the Renaissance. His discovery, Lucretius' ancient poem On the Nature of Things, had been almost entirely lost to history for more than a thousand years. It was a beautiful...

A treatise in which eighteenth-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant attempts to reconcile empiricism and rationalism.

In 'Three Fires', Denise Mina re-imagines the "Bonfire of the Vanities, a series of fires lit throughout Florence at the end of the 15th century - inspired by the fanatical Girolamo Savonarola, a friar and anti-corruption campaigner. In dramatizing the life of Savonarola, Mina explores the downfall of the original architect of cancel culture and, in the process, explores the never-ending tensions between wealth, inequality, and freedom of speech that...

While sick in bed with cancer, Lucien begins making journeys to a place in a parallel world that resembles Venice, Italy, and he becomes caught up in the political intrigues surrounding the Duchessa who rules the city.

Homeschooled by Renaissance Fair enthusiasts, eleven-year-old Imogene has a hard time fitting in when her wish to enroll in public school is granted.

Relates the story of the life of Joan of Arc, as seen through the eyes of the fictional narrator Sieur Louis de Conte, Joan's childhood friend and secretary.