From Louis Bayard, an historic thriller, a misplaced letter, and a timeless love unleash a long-buried net of intrigue that spans 4 centuries Within the late sixteenth century, 5 sensible students collect beneath the cloak of darkness to debate God, politics, astronomy, and the black arts. Often called the College of Night time, they meet in secret to keep away from the wrath of Queen Elizabeth. However one of many males, Thomas Harriot, has secrets and techniques of his personal, secrets and techniques he shares with one particular person solely: the servant girl he loves. In modern-day Washington, D.C., disgraced Elizabethan scholar Henry Cavendish has been employed by the ruthless antiquities collector Bernard Types to discover a lacking letter. The letter dates from the 1600s and was stolen by Henry’s shut pal, Alonzo Wax. Now Wax is lifeless and Types needs the letter again. However the letter is an object of curiosity to others, too. It might be the clue to a hidden treasure; it could comprise the long-sought system for alchemy; it most actually will show the existence of the group of males whom Shakespeare dubbed the College of Night time however about whom little is understood. Becoming a member of Henry in his seek for the letter is Clarissa Dale, a mysterious girl who suffers from visions that solely Henry can perceive. Briefly order, Henry finds himself stumbling by a secretive world of historic perils, caught up in a lethal plot, and ensnared within the tragic legacy of a forgotten genius.
