A respected surgeon and rare-book collector is brutally murdered in his elegant Manhattan home, just hours after showing a book dealer the fifteenth-century manual of black magic—a grimoire—he'd received from a grateful patient. Now the doctor's blood is everywhere, and only the priceless grimoire is missing.
The horrific death of her beloved father has shattered Beatrice O'Connell's quiet, sane, and orderly world. Only by tracking down the vanished malevolent tome—with its dark spells and salacious illustrations—can she hope to put things right. But the search is leading Beatrice, her ex-husband, and a mysterious occultist into an expanding labyrinth of powerful evils, a tangled web that reaches as far as the Vatican itself. What coveted secrets are hidden in the missing volume that threaten to turn Beatrice into precisely what her unseen and unrelenting enemies are determined to destroy?
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“May be the epitome of the feminist thriller…Thisprovocative, compelling, and unsettling novel brilliantly explores the misogynyof Western culture and particularly of the Catholic Church. The graphicviolence may offend some readers, but this ought to be one of the mosttalked-about books of the year. Recommended for all fiction collections.”
— Library Journal
“A very dark, twisty thriller…Ms. Hitchcock has penned a thought-provoking book, which should please lovers of books like The Da Vinci Code…I found the book hard to put down.”
— Fresh Fiction“The novel is never dull.”
— Publishers Weekly“Hitchcock’s clear, straightforward prose and civilized, articulate protagonists…keep the pages turning.”
— Kirkus ReviewsJane Stanton Hitchcock is the New York Times bestselling author of Mortal Friends, The Witches’ Hammer, Social Crimes, and Trick of the Eye, as well as several plays. She lives with her husband, syndicated foreign-affairs columnist Jim Hoagland, in New York City and Washington, DC.
Carrington MacDuffie is a voice actor and recording artist who has narrated over two hundred audiobooks, received numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards, and has been a frequent finalist for the Audie Award, including for her original audiobook, Many Things Invisible. Alongside her narration work, she has released a new album of original songs, Only an Angel.