For Dr. David Beck everyday for the past eight years he has relived the horror of what happened. Everyone tells him its time to move on, but for Beck there can be no closure. A message appeared on his computer, a phrase only he and his dead wife know. Beck is taunted with the impossible--ELizabeth is still alive.

When Colton Burpo made it through an emergency appendectomy, his family was overjoyed at his miraculous survival. What they weren't expecting, though, was the story that emerged in the months that followed - a story as beautiful as it was extraordinary, detailing their little boy's trip to heaven and back.

Venice, a city steeped in a thousand years of history, art and architecture, teeters in precarious balance between endurance and decay. Its architectural treasures crumble--foundations shift, marble ornaments fall--even as efforts to preserve them are underway. This book opens in 1996, when a dramatic fire destroys the historic Fenice opera house, a catastrophe for Venetians. Arriving three days after the fire, Berendt becomes a kind of detective--inquiring...