If you admired how Fiammetta claws her way back after the Sack of Rome and reasserts her status amid Venice’s courtesan circles, you’ll be drawn to Sugar in The Crimson Petal and the White. Like Fiammetta, Sugar bends a male-dominated marketplace—using wit, strategy, and careful self-reinvention—to secure patronage and autonomy. Where Fiammetta works the salons and leverages Bucino’s schemes, Sugar maneuvers through Victorian London’s brothels, drawing rooms, and publishing world with the same flinty resolve and tactical charm.

If the magnetic push‑pull between Fiammetta and Bucino—his sardonic devotion, her imperious brilliance—hooked you, Fingersmith delivers a similarly riveting duet. Where Bucino shields and schemes for Fiammetta through Venetian intrigues and dealings with figures like the healer La Draga, Sue and Maud circle each other through cons, betrayals, and shifting loyalties. You’ll recognize that intoxicating intimacy where affection, survival, and deception blur into one consuming partnership.

If you loved being steeped in Bucino’s Venice—Rialto markets, spice‑scented remedies, back‑alley bargains, and courtesans navigating patrons—The Book of Unholy Mischief will feel like stepping onto the same canals. As Fiammetta rebuilds her salon with Bucino’s quiet hustling and visits to healers like La Draga, Newmark’s apprentice chef slips through kitchens, guilds, and palazzi, uncovering culinary secrets and political schemes. It’s that rich, tactile cityscape where appetite, power, and rumor flavor every deal.

If you were captivated by how Fiammetta leverages seduction and status—and how Bucino isn’t above bribery, spying, or quiet threats to keep them afloat—The Other Boleyn Girl offers that same intoxicating calculus. Just as Venice’s salons and patrons can elevate or ruin Fiammetta overnight, the Tudor court lifts and destroys on a whim; Mary and Anne Boleyn bargain with bodies, secrets, and influence to stay one step ahead, courting danger with every strategic smile.

If Bucino’s first‑person voice—wry, confiding, and razor‑observant—made you feel embedded in Fiammetta’s chambers, Memoirs of a Geisha offers a similarly enveloping narration. Where Bucino whispers the truth behind Venetian masks, Sayuri reveals the hidden training, patronage negotiations, and calculated performances that sustain her livelihood. You get that same behind‑the‑screen candor about beauty, rivalry, and the high price of maintaining favor.