A cryptic summons to a remote country house launches Isaac Inchbold, a London bookseller and antiquarian, on an odyssey through seventeenth-century Europe. Charged with the task of restoring a magnificent library destroyed by the war, Inchbold moves between Prague and the Tower Bridge in London, his fortunes—and his life—hanging on his ability to recover a missing manuscript. Yet the lost volume is not what it seems, and his search is part of a treacherous game of underworld spies and smugglers, ciphers, and forgeries. Inchbold's adventure is compelling from beginning to end as Ross King vividly recreates the turmoil of Europe in the seventeenth century—the sacks of great cities; Raleigh's final voyage; the quest for occult knowledge; and a watery escape from three mysterious horsemen.A Book Sense 76 pick
- ISBN10 0142000809
- ISBN13 9780142000809
- Publish Date 28 May 2002 (first published 30 April 1998)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Publisher Penguin Putnam Inc
- Imprint Penguin USA
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 400
- Language English
- URL https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780142000809