Excerpt from The Mirror Thief by Martin Seay, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The wide fondamenta grows busier as they approach the long bridge. Merchants hurry to boats moored at quayside, bearing bundles or pushing carts laden with bronzeware and majolica and spindled glass beads, eager to cross the lagoon to their booths in the Piazza San Marco before the festival crowds gather. A week ago, when Crivano last came here to Murano to meet with his co-conspirators, he found many shops along this canal closed for the Sensa, having moved their business into the city. Meanwhile, in the Rialto, the guilds had to cajole and bully their members to abandon their storefronts and show their wares in the Piazza. The guilds' case seemed difficult to make. When your whole city is a market, why bother with the fair?

From the bridge's lofty midpoint Crivano can see a tremble in the air over the buildings ahead: heat rising from glass factories. Once lit, their furnaces burn at a constant temperature for weeks on end, even months. The boats below the bridge are stacked with hewn alderwood, soon to be unloaded.

The linkboy leads him past a church, then into a bustling campiello. The workers they pass are flush-faced and soot-blackened; their eyes are red-rimmed and hard, like they've come lately from battle. Near the campiello's wellhead a workman is beating and cursing another, pounding heavy fists on his skull and shoulders. The attacker wears a thick bandage on his forearm; the man he strikes is little more than a boy. When the young man falls, his assailant kicks him until his nose and mouth are well-bloodied. Then a pair of stout fellows steps in and halfheartedly pulls them apart.

Here, dottore, the linkboy says. The Salamander.

Excerpted from The Mirror Thief by Martin Seay. Copyright © 2016 by Martin Seay. Excerpted by permission of Melville House. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.