Contemporary Quests

While in Paris on business, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon receives an urgent late-night phone call: the elderly curator of the Louvre has been murdered inside the museum. Near the body, police have found a baffling cipher. Solving the enigmatic riddle, Langdon is stunned to discover it leads to a trail of clues hidden in the works of Da Vinci - clues visible for all to see and yet ingeniously disguised by the painter.

From the author of critically acclaimed Don Don comes this startling journey through a distant land. In an African country, while a civil war rages, Kibwe and Zuberi meet. Both are 12 years old, both are orphans; Kibwe's parents killed in the name of war and Zuberi's in the name of trade. Kibwe is a boy and Zuberi a gorilla, a young silverback. They are on the run: Kibwe, from the horrors he has committed as a child soldier, and Zuberi, from the violent hand of man.

Shortlisted for the British Book Awards, Author of the Year, 2007.
Winner of the British Book Awards, Richard and Judy Best Read of the Year, 2006.
In Carcassonne a young girl is given a mysterious book by her father which he claims contains the secret of the true Grail. Although Alais cannot understand the strange words and symbols hidden within, she knows that her destiny lies in protecting it.

William Dougal, a post-graduate expert in the medieval script of Caroline Minuscule, stumbles on the garroted corpse of his tutor and finds himself embroiled in a hunt for a cache of diamonds, in a deadly fairy story in which no one obeys the rules. Least of all Dougal's girlfriend Amanda. As the body count rises, the couple pursue the diamonds from London to an East Anglian cathedral close, from Cambridge to a wintry Suffolk estuary.

For the first time in decades Rome is paralysed by a blizzard. And a gruesome discovery is made in the Pantheon, one of the city's most ancient and revered architectural treasures. Covered by softly falling snow is the body of a young woman, her back horribly mutilated. But before Nic Costa and Gianni Peroni of the Questura can begin a formal investigation, the US Embassy has brought in its own people, FBI Agents who want the case closed down as quickly and discreetly as possible.

Carved into the towering cliffs of central Greece, the Metéora monasteries are all but inaccessible. Holy Trinity is the most isolated, its sacred brotherhood the guardians of a long-forgotten secret. In the dead of night, the sanctity of this holy retreat is shattered by an elite group of warriors carrying ancient weapons. One by one, they hurl the silent monks from the cliff-top to the rocks below, the holy men taking their secret to the grave. And halfway across Europe, a terrified academic fears for his life.