In the 1940s, a young Japanese woman--a pearl diver--is discovered to have leprosy and becomes an outcast, even though her case is extraordinarily mild, and is sent to the leper colony Nagashima. Because she is in good health, she becomes an assistant to the doctors there, spending the rest of her life as an exile, but a highly observant one.

It's a family affair when Chief Assistant District Attorney Butch Karp, his gutsy wife Marlene Ciampi, and their prodigious teenage daughter Lucy work to bring down an Asian gangster intent on taking over mob turf in New York's Little Italy.

Butch Karp left the Manhattan DA's office for private practice, and his wife, Marlene Ciampi, now runs a detective agency that specializes in protecting battered women from abusive spouses. Their careers intersect once again when Bruce takes a case fighting city hall, and Marlene investigates the beating of her college friend, now an investigative journalist.

The battle for succession of the Holy Roman Empire pits the Empress Theopahano against Otto II's cousin, Henry of Burgundy.

The sweeping story of Queen Cleopatra, who sat on the Egyptian throne for decades, bore Julius Caesar his only son, and took Marc Antony, Caesar's general, as lover and consort.

Richard Pepen comes to the campus of Hampden College in Vermont to escape the featureless, dusty California of his childhood, and to further his studies of ancient Greek. In this tightly woven liberal arts community there are five other students of Papen's chosen subject, all of them intimidatingly remote from the rest of the student body and fiercely loyal to their professor and mentor, the stiffly eccentric Julian Morrow. Each of his students has surrendered control of their college curriculum entirely to him. Papen makes a similar sacrifice and progresses from these external rituals and loyalties to a much deeper, more disturbing involvement in Dionysian rites and murder. The consuming effects of his guilt and atonement occupy the latter sections of the novel.

In this Cold War history, a Washington-based journalist tells of the great advances in intelligence gathering under Eisenhower and the CIA, which included high-altitude, long-range aircraft (such as the U-2) as well as the first spy satellites. These new space-based technologies revolutionized U.S. intelligence gathering and played a significant behind-the-scenes role in the relationships between the two superpowers. In an epilogue, Taubman connects the creative thrust of the Cold War era with the challenges that have arisen following the events of 9/11. A New York Times Notable Book for 2003.