?Do you ever wonder if you?ve lived the life you were meant to?? I ask her. She sighs, and dips her head. ?Even if I do, what difference will it make?? In 1988, two eight-year-old girls with almost identical names and the same love of ballet meet for the first time. They seem destined to be best friends forever and to become professional dancers. Years later, however, they have both been dealt so many cruel blows that they walk away from each other...

?Rats are always bigger than you expect?? Falco, ancient Rome?s hangdog investigator, hates sharing a cell with a rodent - though being bailed by his old mother is almost as embarrassing. His high-born girlfriend can?t decide if she wants him, and Titus Caesar?s reward for past services is a wet fish. Hoping for a better life, or at least a better apartment, he takes on new clients. On the elegant slopes of the Pincian Hill, three nouveau riche freedmen...