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The Assassini
by Thomas Gifford
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It is 1982. In the Vatican, priestly vultures gather around the dying Pope, whispering the names of possible successors. In
a forgotten monastery on Ireland's gale-swept coast, a dangerous document is hidden, waiting to be claimed. And in a family
chapel in Princeton, New Jersey, a nun is murdered at her prayers. When her brother, lawyer Ben Driskill, realizes the Church
will never investigate her death, he sets out to find the murderer himself-and uncovers an explosive secret.The Assassini.
An age-old brotherhood of killers. Once they were hired by princes of the Church to protect it in dangerous times. But whose
orders do they now obey?
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Dante Club
by Matthew Pearl
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"In 1865 Boston, the literary geniuses of the Dante Club-poets and Harvard professors Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Dr.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell, along with publisher J. T. Fields-are finishing America's first translation
of The Divine Comedy and preparing to unveil Dante's remarkable visions to the New World. The powerful Boston Brahmins at
Harvard College are fighting to keep Dante in obscurity, believing that the infiltration of foreign superstitions into American
minds will prove as corrupting as the immigrants arriving at Boston Harbor." Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes and an outcast
police officer named Nicholas Rey, the first black member of the Boston police department, must place their careers on the
line to end the terror.
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Daughter of God
by Lewis Perdue
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When Zoe Ridgeway, a prominent art broker, visits Switzerland with her husband Seth, she expects to purchase the rich estate
of a secretive art collector. But before Zoe can complete the transaction, she and Seth are drawn into a thousand-year-old
web of conspiracy, murder and intrigue that begins and ends with the mystery of a female Messiah, a young girl whose existence,
if proven, would explode the very foundation of Western culture.
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The Flanders Panel
by Arturo Perez-Reverte
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A Fifteenth-Century Painting by a Flemish master is about to be auctioned when Julia, a young art restorer, discovers a peculiar
inscription hidden in the corner: Who killed the knight? Julia is determined to solve the five-hundred-year-old murder, but
as she begins to look for clues, several of her friends in the art world are brutally murdered in quick succession. Just when
all of the players in the mystery seem to be pawns themselves, events race toward a shocking conclusion.
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Foucault's Pendulum
by Umberto Eco
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A superb cerebral entertainment about three editors who cook up a hoax-involving the Templar Knights, Stonehenge, the Cabala,
and Brazilian voodoo, among other things-that suddenly becomes all too real.
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Giotto's Hand
by Iain Pears
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General Taddeo Bottando of Rome's Art Theft Squad is in trouble: his theory that a single master criminal, dubbed "Giotto"-for
the fourteenth-century Florentine painter about whom little is known-is behind a string of major thefts has aroused the scorn
of his archenemy and rival, the bureaucrat Corrado Argan. With the support of English art dealer Jonathan Argyll, they embark
on a mystery that could lead to the greatest art find in history.
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The Historian
by Elizabeth Kostova
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Parsing obscure signs and hidden texts, reading codes worked into the fabric of medieval monastic traditions - and evading
the unknown adversaries who will go to any lengths to conceal and protect Vlad the Impaler's ancient powers - one woman comes
ever closer to the secret of her own past and a confrontation with the very definition of evil.
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The Last Templar
by Raymond Khoury
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Four masked horsemen dressed as Templar Knights emerge from Central Park and ride up the Fifth Avenue steps of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art during the blacktie opening of a Treasures of the Vatican exhibit. Storming through the crowds, the horsemen
brutally attack anyone standing between them and their prize. Attending the gala, archaeologist Tess Chaykin watches in silent
terror as the leader of the horsemen hones in on one piece in particular, a strange geared device. He utters a few cryptic
Latin words as he takes hold of it with reverence before leading the horsemen out and disappearing into the night. In the
aftermath, an FBI investigation is led by anti-terrorist specialist Sean Reilly. Soon, he and Tess are drawn into the dark,
hidden history of the crusading Knights.
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Map of Bones
by James Rollins
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The Vatican is in turmoil after the theft of the bones of the Three Magi and Lieutenant Rachel Verona of Rome's carabinieri
is assigned to lead the investigation. But no ordinary police organization alone can deal with the bizarre theft and massacre,
and SIGMA Force-an elite covert arm of the U.S. Defense Department-is called in under the command of Grayson Pierce. Together
they set out on a twisting trail through a labyrinth of clues and dark revelations that carry them to the sites of the Seven
Wonders of the World-and to the doorstep of the mystical and terrifying Dragon Court.
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Overseer
by Jonathan Rabb
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It has long been rumored in academic circles that a sixteenth-century monk named Eisenreich took Machiavelli several steps
further, writing a masterplan, 'On Supremacy', for world domination so dangerous the Pope had him killed to suppress it. It
has fallen into the hands of a cabal intent on using it as a blueprint for ripping apart society as we know it and creating
a new world order out of the ashes of the old.
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The Prophetess
by Barbara Wood
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In the Sinai Desert, archaeologist Catherine Alexander has just unearthed a cache of six ancient papyrus scrolls that point
to the millennium's most transforming secret. It is a discovery that may cost Catherine her life as she dodges government
agents, Vatican operatives, and cyberspace perils in her race to translate the scrolls and release their powers to the world.
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Rule of Four
by Ian Caldwell & Dustin Thomason
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Two students are a hairsbreadth from solving the mysteries of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, a Renaissance text that has baffled
scholars for centuries. Famous for its hypnotic power over those who study it, the five-hundred-year-old Hypnerotomachia may
finally reveal its secrets - to Tom Sullivan and Paul Harris. As the deadline looms, research has stalled-until an ancient
diary surfaces. What Tom and Paul discover inside shocks even them: proof that the location of a hidden crypt has been ciphered
within the pages of the obscure Renaissance text. Armed with this final clue, the two friends delve into the bizarre world
of the Hypnerotomachia-a world of forgotten erudition, strange sexual appetites, and terrible violence.
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School of Night
by Alan Wall
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"Sean Tallow has only two overriding desires in life. One is to step into the shoes of his glamorous friend Daniel Pagett,
and the other is to establish the truth about the "School of Night," a shadowy group of Elizabethans who clustered
around Sir Walter Ralegh."
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Templar Legacy
by Steve Berry
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"The ancient order of the Knights Templar possessed untold wealth and absolute power over kings and popes ... until the
Inquisition, when they were wiped from the face of the earth, their riches lost. But now two forces vying for the treasure
have learned that it is not at all what they thought it was - and its true nature could change the modern world." Follow
Cotton Malone as he learns about the ancient conspiracy surrounding the Knights Templar and realizes that even more than lives
are at stake.
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Unburied
by Charles Palliser
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Dr. Courtine, an unworldly academic of Victorian England, is invited to spend the days before Christmas with an old friend
in Thurchester where he tracks down an elusive eleventh-century manuscript, the existence of which only he believes in, and
becomes a witness to a murder that seems never to have been committed.
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The Eight
by Katherine Neville
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Computer expert Cat Velis is heading for a job to Algeria. Before she goes, a mysterious fortune teller warns her of danger,
and an antique dealer asks her to search for pieces to a valuable chess set that has been missing for years...In the South
of France in 1790 two convent girls hide valuable pieces of a chess set all over the world, because the game that can be played
with them is too powerful...
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