Ancient Mystery Fiction

The Aventine is full of fracturing families. Wives plot to leave their husbands, husbands plot to spend more time with their mistresses. Masters must endure slaves taking obscene liberties, while aggressive slaves are learning to ape dangerous masters. But no one wants to hire an investigator during the holiday. Albia is lumped with her own domestic stress: overexcited children and bilious guests, too many practical jokes and her magistrate husband Tiberius preoccupied with local strife.

Spencer Collins thinks his life at Harvard will be all about basketball and pre-med. The friends he’s made when he hits the storied ivy-clad campus from a very different life in urban Chicago are a happy bonus. But Spencer is about to be introduced to the most mysterious inner sanctum of the inner sanctum: to his surprise, he’s in the running to be “punched” for one of Harvard’s elite final clubs. As Spencer is considered for membership for the Delphic Club, he’s plunged not only into the secret world of male privilege, but also a century-old club mystery.

Julius Caesar left his gardens to the citizens of Rome, a peaceful sanctuary across the Tiber. Now the gardens and their sacred grove are dangerous haunts, especially for women alone. 'Don't go to the Grove,' people mutter, but when her husband has to leave Rome, it falls to Albia to supervise his building project in an old grotto. Why has someone buried tattered scrolls by obscure philosophers - and does it involve a worse crime than terrible writing? Soon that puzzle is overtaken.

Autumn Thorne believed she discovered the perfect love. Yet the moment she revealed she was a witch, her relationship went to hell in a handbasket. Nearly a decade later, in an ironic twist of fate, the man who shunned her shows up on her doorstep and asks for her help to develop his own latent powers. For the better part of nine years, Keaton Carlyle has tried to forget the one woman whose very touch made him burn with uncontrollable desire.

Three prominent world leaders disappear following the World Summit in Kuala Lumpur. The following day, US President John Remy is found dead in his hotel room. Meanwhile, two friends on a road trip across North America come to the aid of a mysterious woman, washed up on the banks of the Colorado River. Somehow, all these events are linked. Choosing to help her plunges them into a nightmarish race across the globe, for she holds a secret that defies all we know about human evolution. Pursued by a deadly force, they must recover a relic so ancient it's fallen into legend.

When Zet's father left home to fight the Hyksos, his only option was to leave siblings Zet and Kat in charge. It turns out keeping food on the table is easier said than done. They need a solution and they need it now. One day, Zet spots a thief running through their market square. When the thief gets away, the medjay announce a reward for the man's capture. Zet jumps at the chance. The medjay, however, laugh at him. Zet cares little what they think. The siblings soon set off on a dangerous investigation.

Does Earth have portals to an extraterrestrial world? Do these portals lead to the legendary island paradise where the old grow young again? Our ancestors believed in a physical place that promised health, happiness, and immortality. Today we consider the old legends to be myths, nothing more than sailor's fish stories. Yet some of the most prominent names in history devoted their entire lives to searching for the lost island of paradise - and they found it.

The murder of an esteemed archaeologist is fueling an already heated war between natives and the academics who excavate their land. And when the coroner confirms that the victim was cannibalized, the story takes a twisted turn. Private eye Howard Moon Deer and ex-police chief Jack Wilder are on the case. The killing appears to be a modern mimicry of the Anasazi's rumored past - one the tribe thinks would be best left buried. But Howard and Jack must search for clues even if it means digging up sacred land. As they struggle to fight tribal politics, the killer strikes again.

Throughout their married lives, baseball star Gaspar Bethlen's wife gave him a lovingly crafted mystery every year for Christmas. Solving the clues led him to his present, but the mysteries themselves were the true gift. Now, Beth has died, leaving Gasper a wreck of a man. But Beth left behind a clue, the beginning of one final Christmas mystery, and it's much more than either of them expected.

It's the summer of AD 79, and Flavia Gemina the sea captain's daughter -along with her friends Jonathan the Jewish boy, Nubia the African slave-girl, and Lupus the homeless beggar-boy - set sail for the Bay of Naples, to stay with Flavia's uncle near Pompeii. They are soon absorbing in trying to solve a riddle that may lead to treasure. But then tragedy strikes - Mount Vesuvius erupts and the children are fleeing for their lives from one of the worst natural disasters ever recorded.

376 AD: The Eastern Roman Empire is alone against the tide of barbarians swelling on her borders. Emperor Valens juggles the paltry border defenses to stave off invasion from the Goths north of the Danube. Meanwhile, in Constantinople, a pact between faith and politics spawns a lethal plot that will bring the dark and massive hordes from the east crashing down on these struggling borders. The fates conspire to see Numerius Vitellius Pavo thrust into the limitanei, the border legions, just before they are sent to recapture the long-lost eastern Kingdom of Bosporus.

Victory is in sight for Kivilaz and his Batavi army. The Roman army clings desperately to its remaining fortresses along the Rhine, its legions riven by dissent and mutiny, and once-loyal allies of Rome are beginning to imagine the unimaginable: freedom from the rulers who have dominated them since the time of Caesar. The four centurions - two Batavi and two Roman, men who were once comrades in arms - must find their destiny in a maze of loyalties and threats, as the blood tide of war ebbs and flows across Germania and Gaul.

Deep in the heart of the Upper Egyptian desert lies a forbidden village, where bands of artisans prepare the tombs of the Pharaohs. Guarded by a handful of elite soldiers, the hidden city shelters the most precious of treasures: the Stone of Light, a legendary stone of magical power. When a devious military officer schemes to infiltrate the city and capture the sacred gem, his subversive plot is thwarted by an unlikely hero: a desert wanderer who falls into a maze of treachery and betrayal, desire and danger.

In Egypt during the late Roman Republic, the young Gordianus finds himself involved in a raid to steal the golden Sarcophagus of Alexander the Great....

When Michael unexpectedly receives a recent picture of a long-lost love, a woman he thought was dead, he gives up everything to search for her and to find answers to questions that have plagued him through the years. Michael’s search takes him from St. Petersburg, Russia to an archeological dig site in Ukraine’s Carpathian mountains - a desolate area where medieval knights once roamed and horrifying secrets are buried - and at the same time, it creates a mystical connection to the riches and debauchery of the court of Nicholas and Alexandra and the “mad monk” Rasputin.

Stella, an archaeologist specializing in Anasazi culture, and David, a mysterious Navajo boy, are on the run from something terrifying. As they flee up into the snowy mountains of Colorado, they are carjacked by criminals. Caught in a blizzard, they must take refuge in what they believe is an abandoned cabin. It's at this cabin that they will face horrors beyond their imagination.

Indie Blackwood is a popular cheerleader with a football-star boyfriend. On the surface, her life looks perfect. But when a guy dies right before her eyes and an ancient family Bible is stolen, Indie's world spirals into darkness. Turns out, Indie has a destiny. And it involves much more than pom-poms and parties. If she doesn't get the Bible back, every witch on the planet will die. And that's seriously bad news for Indie, because according to Bishop, the hot warlock who has an uncanny knowledge of everything that matters, she's a witch, too.

After a career with a shadowy security firm with interests on both sides of the law, Dante has come home to put all that behind him and has gone to work for a private investigator. A call alerts him early one morning that Bill Owens, a fellow P.I., has been charged with a notorious 30-year-old killing. Bill was involved in a political group in the late 60s, which among other pranks and small-time crimes, held up a bank....

A long-lost diary, a rare book of ghost stories, and unrelenting nightmares combine to send archeologist Michael Rempart on a forbidden journey into the occult and his own past. When Michael returns to his family home after more than a decade-long absence, he is rocked by the emotion and intensity of the memories it awakens. His father is reclusive, secretive, and obsessed with alchemy and its secrets - secrets that Michael possesses. He believes the way to end this sudden onslaught of nightmares is to confront his disturbing past.

Over 200 years ago, a covert expedition shadowing Lewis and Clark disappeared into the wilderness of central Idaho. Now, seven anthropology students and their professor vanish in the same area. The key to finding them lies in an ancient secret, one involving alchemy, gold, and immortality...a secret that men throughout history have sought to unveil. Michael Rempart is a brilliant archeologist whose colorful and controversial career has earned him admiring fans and implacable foes, but he is plagued by a troubling sense of the supernatural and a mysterious spiritual intuitiveness.