Ex-Libris - Softcover

King, Ross

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0142000809 ISBN 13: 9780142000809

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 2002

Synopsis

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

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

The second novel, by the author of Brunelleschi?s Dome, and Michelangelo and the Pope?s Ceiling is an elaborate historical mystery.

Responding to a cryptic summons to a remote country house, London bookseller Isaac Inchbold finds himself responsible for restoring a magnificent library pillaged during the English Civil War, and in the process slipping from the surface of 1660s London into an underworld of spies and smugglers, ciphers and forgeries.

As he assembles the fragments of a complex historical mystery, Inchbold learns how Sir Ambrose Plessington, founder of the library, escaped from Bohemia on the eve of the Thirty Years War with plunder from the Imperial Library. Inchbold?s hunt for one of these stolen volumes -- a lost Hermetic text -- soon casts him into an elaborate intrigue. His fortunes hang on the discovery of the missing manuscript but his search reveals that the elusive volume is not what it seems and that he has been made an unwitting player in a treacherous game.

From the Back Cover:

“A suitably labyrinthine plot… Above all, it is King’s sheer gift for storytelling that makes Ex Libris such an enjoyable read.” -- The Oxford Times

“Highly original and very clever indeed.” -- Manchester Evening News

“An exquisite historical thriller and a story which twists and turns like the beautifully-evoked back streets of 17th century London.” -- Yorkshire Evening Post

“Ross King is a master craftsman of extravagant melodrama.” -- Irish Times

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0142000809
• ISBN 13: 9780142000809
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400