This is the first novel in what has become one of the most popular series in contemporary Science Fiction, now back in print from Tor. In the twenty-fourth century, the Company preserves works of art and extinct forms of life (for profit of course). It recruits orphans from the past, renders them all but immortal, and trains them to serve the Company. One of these is Mendoza the botanist, who is sent to Elizabethan England to collect samples from the garden of Sir Walter Iden. Her quest is jeopardized by Nicholas Harpole, who stirs unfamiliar emotions within her about her future - with a man she will long outlive.
- ISBN10 0151002991
- ISBN13 9780151002993
- Publish Date 15 February 1998 (first published 4 December 1997)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 22 June 2021
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Houghton Mifflin
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 329
- Language English