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Unique and magical, Venice looks like a fantasy of antique palazzos, fountain-centered courtyards and canals arched with graceful bridges. Its air of unreality gives a heightened twist to the passions, quirks and violence which haunt the narrow streets of “La Serenissima”.

` The many books about Venice include “A History of Venice” by John Julius Norwich, an English nobleman, whose delightful book is actually a comprehensive history of the Venetian Republic which was ended by Napoleon in 1797. Partner it with another classic, Luigi Borzini’s “The Italians” which does for Italy what Sean O’Faolain’s “The Irish” does for Ireland.

“Desiring Italy: Women Writers Celebrate a Country and a Culture” has a delicious Venetian section ranging from Mary Shelley to Muriel Spark and including a mouth-watering and informative excerpt from Marcella Hazan’s “Classic Italian Cookbook”.

Novelists are inspired by the city to depths and twists which give these books a flavor all their own. Consider Henry James’ “The Wings of the Dove” which deals with three people whose dreams of love reveal new prisms as their desires come within reach and change at the moment of fulfillment. Thomas Mann’s “Death in Venice” releases the repressed love of a lifetime on the brink of death. In Ian McEwen’s “The Comfort of Strangers” a couple find the adventure they seek in Venice becomes one that appeals to their dark side. In “Serenissima”, the irrepressible Erica Jong takes a fictional romp through the Venice Film Festival where, in real life, she once served on the Festival jury. Ironically, it’s the only one of these four books that hasn’t been made into a film.

Mystery writers find equal range in the floating city. Three wonderful series have distinctive heroes. They are the late Michael Dibdin’s Aurelio Zen of Criminalpol who returns to his native Venice in “Dead Lagoon”; Edward Sklepowich’s erudite literary biographer Urbino McIntyre (“The Last Gondola”) and Donna Leon’s family man, Commissario Guido Brunetti, first seen in “Death at La Fenice”.

Because Venice is such a visually beautiful city, I’m going to recommend “Eyewitness Guide to Travel: Venice and the Veneto.” This beautiful series is the best at what it does, show more than tell. It has maps not only by block and by district, but also by building. Before you enter a historic palazzo or museum, you’ll know exactly where everything is. For those who want more words, you’ll find them in John Ruskin’s 19th century classic “The Stones of Venice”, Mary McCarthy’s 1963 “Venice Observed” and the updated “The World of Venice” by travel writer Jan Morris who, as James Morris, climbed Mt. Everest with Sir Edward Hillary.