Category: Mailbox Monday

Mailbox Monday is on tour with June’s stop being at Burton Book Review.

Wow, it’s been forever since I posted a Mailbox Monday post! Actually when I looked back I hadn’t posted one since January! Of course I haven’t received all that many books this year (not like last year, where I went absolutely book bonkers!) Anyway, I got 4 books this week:

From LibraryThing’s Early Reviewer Program:

     It’s the spring of 1939, and the prospect of war in Europe looms large. The United States has no intelligence service. In Washington, D.C., President Franklin Roosevelt may run for an unprecedented third term and needs someone he can trust to find out what the Nazis are up to. His choice: John F. Kennedy.
It’s a surprising selection. At twenty-two, Jack Kennedy is the attractive but unpromising second son of Joseph P. Kennedy, Roosevelt’s ambassador to Britain (and occasional political adversary). When Jack decides to travel through Europe to gather research for his Harvard senior thesis, Roosevelt takes the opportunity to use him as his personal spy. The president’s goal: to stop the flow of German money that has been flooding the United States to buy the 1940 election – an election that Adolf Hitler intends for Roosevelt to lose.

From a Paperbackswap Box-of-Books trade:

     Nearly five centuries ago a fleet of boats landed mysteriously on an island in an inland sea. There, an ancient Andean people hid a golden hoard greater than that of any pharaoh, then they and their treasure vanished into history – until now.
1998, the Andes Mountains of Peru. Dirk Pitt dives into an ancient sacrificial pool, saving two American archaeologists from certain drowning. But his death-defying rescue is only the beginning, as it draws the intrepid Pitt into a vortex of darkness and danger, corruption and betrayal. A sinister crime syndicate has traced the long-lost treasure – worth almost a billion dollars – from the Andes to the banks of a hidden underground river flowing beneath a Mexican desert. Driven by burning greed and a ruthless bloodlust, the syndicate is racing to seize the golden prize … and to terminate the one man who can stop them: Dirk Pitt!

     Charts of lost gold … breathtaking art and rare volumes … maps of hidden oil and mineral deposits that could change the world’s balance of power. Now Dirk Pitt has discovered the secret trail of the treasures of Alexandria – a trail that plunges him into a brutal conspiracy for total domination of the globe. Zealots threaten to unseat the governments of Egypt and Mexico, exposing America to invasion and economic collapse. Suddenly, from East to West, anarchists reach their deadly tentacles into the heart of the United States. And Dirk Pitt is up against the most feared assassin known to man. An international band of terrorists is making its play for world power on the high seas – and Pitt is the only man alive who can stop them!
      In prison, they call her the Sculptress for the strange figurines she carves – symbols of the day she hacked her mother and sister to pieces and reassembled them in a blood-drenched jigsaw. Sullen, menacing, grotesquely fat, Olive Martin is burned-out journalist Rosalind Leigh’s only hope of getting a new book published.
But as she interviews Olive, in her cell, Roz finds flaws in the Sculptress’s confession. Is she really guilty as she insists? Drawn into Olive’s world of obsessional lies and love, nothing can stop Roz’s pursuit of the chilling, convoluted truth. Not the tidy suburbanites who’d rather forget the murders, not a volatile ex-policeman and her own erotic response to him, not an attack on her life.

Mailbox Monday is on tour, with January’s location being at At Home with Books.

Only one book in my mailbox this week. From PBS:

In this gripping third novel in the acclaimed series, Myron Bolitar must confront a past that is dead and buried – and more dangerous than ever before. The home is top-notch New Jersey suburban. The living room is Martha Stewart. The basement is Legos – and blood. The signs of a violent struggle. For Myron Bolitar, the disappearance of a man he once competed against is bring back memories – of the sport he and Greg Downing had both played and the woman they both loved. Now, among the stars, the wannabes, the gamblers, and the groupies, Myron is embarking upon the strange ride of a sports hero gone wrong that just may lead to certain death. Namely, his own.

Mailbox Monday is on tour, with January’s location being at At Home with Books.

I actually hadn’t received a book in the mail at all this year until the 21st! I think that’s got to be some kind of a record for me, haha!

A Paperbackswap wishlist book:

 Dust and Shadow: An Account of the Ripper Killings by Dr. John H. Watson by Lyndsay Faye

From the gritty streets of nineteenth century London, the loyal and courageous Dr. Watson offers a tale unearthed after generations of lore: the harrowing story of Sherlock Holmes’s attempt to hunt down Jack the Ripper.
As England’s greatest specialist in criminal detection, Sherlock Holmes is unwavering in his quest to capture the killer responsible for terrifying London’s East End. He hires an “unfortunate” known as Mary Ann Monk, the friend of a fellow streetwalker who was one of the Ripper’s earliest victims; and he relies heavily on the steadfast and devoted Dr. John H. Watson. When Holmes himself is wounded in Whitechapel during an attempt to catch the savage monster, the popular press launches an investigation of its own, questioning the great detective’s role in the very crimes he is so fervently struggling to prevent. Stripped of his credibility, Holmes is left with no choice but to break every rule in the desperate race to find the madman known as “the Knife” before it is too late.

I also received 5 books from my grandmother:

Mailbox Monday is on tour, with December’s location being at Let Them Read Books.

I actually received these books last week, but I never got around to creating a post, so I’m sharing them now. The first was a book I got from Bookmooch, the second was a win from the LibraryThing Early Reviewers Program.

 During a crowded service at a cathedral in Germany, armed intruders in monks’ robes unleash a nightmare of blood and destruction. But the killers have not come for gold; they seek a more valuable prize: the bones of the Magi who once paid homage to a newborn savior … a treasure that could reshape the world. With the Vatican in turmoil, SIGMA Force leaps into action. An elite team of scientific and Special Forces operatives under the command of Grayson Pierce and accompanied by Lieutenant Rachel Verona of Rome’s carabinieri, they are pursuing a deadly mystery that weaves through sites of the Seven Wonders of the World and ends at the doorstep of an ancient, mystical, and terrifying secret order. For there are those with dark plans for the stolen sacred remains that will alter the future of humankind … when science and religion unite to unleash a horror not seen since the beginning of time.

Nashville private investigator Jared McKean has a son with Down’s syndrome, a best friend with AIDS, an ex-wife he can’t seem to fall out of love with, and a weakness for women in jeopardy – until one frames him for murder. His DNA and fingerprints are found at the murder scene. his voice is on the victim’s answering machine, and the victim was killed with a bullet from his gun. To make matters worse, his teenaged nephew comes out of the closet and runs away to join a dangerous fringe of the Goth subculture. Now Jared must find a way to clear his name, hold his family together, and solve a case that could cost him his life.

Mailbox Monday is on tour, with December’s location being at Let Them Read Books

The only thing that came this past week was one book from Bookmooch:

 A young woman is shot in cold blood, her lifeless body dumped outside the stadium at the height of the US Open. Once her tennis career had skyrocketed. Now the headlines are being made by another young player from the wrong side of the tracks. When Myron Bolitar investigates the killing he uncovers a connection between the two players and a six-year-old murder at an exclusive club. Suddenly Myron is in over his head. And with a dirty senator, a jealous mother, and the mob all drawn into the case, he finds himself playing the most dangerous game of all…

Well I had a good mailbox again this week. I really need to stay off of Paperbackswap!! Oh well. (I also received Assassin of Secrets from LibraryThing’s Early Reviewer program, but I’m not listing that book and you can read why here.)

So from Paperbackswap:

 Computers, poetry and Samurai lore were successful businessman Tadeo Kurobashi’s passions. So it stood to reason that the ancient “art” of hara-kiri would be his suicide method of choice. But Detective J.P. Beaumont wasn’t certain that the dead software magnate had any choice in the matter of his own demise – despite the bloody Samurai sword Kurobashi clutched in his lifeless hand. Especially since an error in the time-honored death ritual indicated cold-blooded homicide … of a most traditional sort.

 

 
 Her male-bashing pop-psych bestseller created a storm of controversy on the talk-show circuit. Now Professor Hope Devane is dead, brutally slashed on a quiet street in one of L.A.’s safest neighborhoods. The LAPD’s investigation has reached a dead end, and homicide detective Milo Sturgis turns to his friend Dr. Alex Delaware for a psychological profile of the victim – and a portrait of a killer. Hope Devane had very different public and private faces. The killer could be any one of the millions who read her book, or someone from the personal lives she kept so carefully separate. As Alex and Milo dig deeper into her shadowy past, they will set an elaborate trap for her killer … and reveal the unspeakable act that triggered a dark chain of violence.

 Peter Hale is a young attorney with a lot to prove. Crossing his father, one of Portland’s most powerful lawyers, was a costly mistake. Now, cut loose from his job and from his inheritance, Peter’s landed in the public defender’s office of a small Oregon town – and in the middle of a high-profile case that could make or break his career. His mentally retarded client, accused of the savage murder of a college coed, faces the death penalty. And Peter faces a choice – between the pursuit of headlines and the pursuit of truth, between the compulsion to save himself and the courage to save his client – in a devastating trial by fire.

 
 The papers call him the Ice Man. David Nash, defense attorney – cool, unruffled, practically unbeatable in the courtroom. Most of his clients are guilty. A few may be monsters. Suddenly the Ice Man is assailed by doubts and unanswerable questions. What is the cost of each victory, each rapist or murderer set free – to society and to Nash’s soul? Then comes a case that may be Nash’s redemption. A client whose innocence he can believe in, a rising lawyer and family man accused of the brutal murder of an undercover vice cop. But as the case moves toward trial, new doubts grip him: What is truth and what is carefully fabricated falsehood? Is Nash, a master at handling juries, being manipulated himself? And by whom? By the time Nash’s perfect case is finished, the questions become a matter of life and death.

 An epic story that movies with force, passion, and authority, Balance of Power begins when President Kerry Kilcannon and television journalist Lara Costello at last decide to marry. But the momentous occasion is followed by an unspeakable tragedy – a massacre of innocents by gunfire – that ignites a high-stakes game of politics and legal maneuvering in the Senate, the courtroom, and across the country, which the charismatic but untested young President is determined to win at any cost. But in the incendiary clash over gun violence and gun rights, the cost to both Kilcannons may be even higher than he imagined.

 
 Long estranged from her blue-blooded New England family, attorney Caroline Masters is summoned home to defend her niece against charges of murder. Police found twenty-two-year-old Brett Allen blood-splattered and incoherent near the scene of the crime, the weapon covered with her fingerprints. Caroline has doubts of her own about Brett’s innocence. But as the sensational trial heats up, she’ll find disturbing inconsistencies in the testimony of the toughest challenges of her life and career – from trusting her former lover, state prosecutor Jackson Watts, to risking the federal judgeship she’s worked her whole life for, to exposing a dark family secret that could save her niece or destroy them both…

 

  In the high-stakes, high-pressured world of presidential politics, where predators carry microphones and one misstep can savage a lifetime of achievement, Kerry Kilcannon is the rarest player of all. Kilcannon believes he can make the system work. And he may just die trying. Driven by the violent nightmare of his childhood, fueled by forces that few could understand, and burdened by secrets no one must know, Kilcannon is running for President – and entering the crucial battleground of California with seven days to go. But for Kilcannon, there are hurdles that his courage, charisma, and compassion may not overcome: the network correspondent he still loves; the reporter bent on the exposure; the rival who’ll do anything to win; and the fanatic who believes that he must murder Kilcannon to protect the right to life…

Here’s what came this week (now if only I could finish the book I’ve been reading for the past two weeks … and it’s not because it’s bad, it’s because I’m just not reading). The first was a wish list book from Paperbackswap, the second is a LibraryThing Early Reviewers win.

England in the 1880s was a society in transition, shedding the skin of Victorianism and moving towards a more modern age. Promiscuity, moral decline, prostitution, unemployment, poverty, police inefficiency … all these things combined to create a feeling of uncertainty and fear. The East End of London became the focus of that fear. Here lived the uneducated, poverty-ridden and morally destitute masses. When Jack the Ripper walked onto the streets of the East End he came to represent everything that was wrong with the area and with society as a whole. He was fear in a human form, an unknown lurker in the shadows who could cross boundaries and kill. Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History is not yet another attempt to identify the culprit. Instead, this book sets the murders in their historical context, examining in depth what East London was like in 1888, how it came to be that way, and how events led to one of the most infamous and grisly episodes of the Victorian era.

 Maggie Silver is solidly middle class, with a mortgage to pay and an ill mother to support. She does her best to scramble up the ladder at an exclusive, high-powered PR firm in Southern California, whose clients are movie stars and famous athletes. Now, Maggie is being asked to take on her toughest client yet: Senator Henry Paxton, distinguished statesman from Southern California, who also happens to be the father of Anabelle, Maggie’s former high school best friend. Senator Paxton’s young, female aide has been found murdered, and it is up to Maggie to run damage control and prevent a scandal. Thrown back into the Paxton’s glamorous world, Maggie is unexpectedly flooded with memories from the stormy years in high school when her friendship with Anabelle was dramatically severed after a tragedy that neither of them has been able to forget. As Maggie gets further embroiled in the lives of the Paxtons, she realizes that the ties of her old friendship are stronger than she thinks.

Mailbox Monday is on tour, with October’s location being at Savvy Verse & Wit.

Well I got another Paperbackswap Box-of-Books trade in the mail this week. I’ve still got one more big one coming to me. After that I hope I’m done for a while, because I really need to start controlling myself, lol. Here’s what came this week:

 Tim Blake is an average guy. He sells cars. He has an ex-wife who’s moved in with another man. It’s not a life without hassles, but nothing will prepare him for what happens when his daughter, Sydney, vanishes into thin air. At the hotel where she supposedly worked, no one has ever heard of her. Even her closest friends seem to be at a loss. As he retraces Sydney’s steps, Tim discovers that the suburban Connecticut town he always thought of as idyllic is anything but. What he doesn’t know is that his every move is being watched. There are others who want to find Sydney as much as Tim does. And the closer Tim comes to the truth, the closer he comes to every parent’s worst nightmare – and the kind of evil only a parent’s love has a chance in hell of stopping.

 

 

 Dirk Pitt proved invincible in Raise the Titanic! Now, with the future of virtually every person in the world at stake, he is enlisted to spearhead his most daring mission yet – the rescue of a vital document for the United States. To an energy-starved, economically devastated America, possession of this document is worth billions. But to Great Britain, it’s worth a war. Pitt’s quest plunges him into a head-to-head confrontation with Britain’s most cunning secret agent – and into the throes of a torrid love triangle. As time runs out for a desperate America, Dirk Pitt races toward an underwater clash more terrifying than anything Clive Cussler has ever created.

 

 

 He’s no ordinary kidnapper. Not only does he strike again and again, but he collects the ransom, gets away safely, and leaves his hostages dead. Now, after months of eluding the best law enforcement can put against him, this monster is looking for a new challenge. He’s no ordinary cop. Lucas Jordan is a profiler in Noah Bishop’s Special Crimes Unit. But his uncanny ability to locate missing people comes at a tremendous personal price … and stirs mistrust among the hard-nosed cops he’s forced to work with. Now in Clayton County, North Carolina, where the latest in a string of kidnapping victims has turned up dead, Lucas, with the aid of carnival psychic Samantha Burke, is doing what he does best: hunt fear. But this time fear is hunting back.

 

 

 Anthony McCarran, one of the army’s most distinguished generals, was devastating by the loss of his longtime friend Jack Gallagher, who was killed in Vietnam. For years, the McCarran and Gallagher families have remained close, watching a new generation of soldiers face combat. Today, the general’s son Lt. Brian McCarran is back from Iraq. Traumatized by the experience, there’s only one person Brian wishes to confide in: Kate Gallagher. As the daughter of a fallen soldier, Kate understands the pain of war. But as the wife of Brian’s commanding officer, the volatile and shell-shocked Capt. Joe D’Abruzzo, there’s only so much Kate can do to offer comfort – and only so many secrets Brian can share… Tragedy strikes when Brian shoots and kills D’Abruzzo on their army post in Virginia after a bitter confrontation. Now, in a high-profile court-martial, Brian must face old demons and new enemies as he fights to prove his innocence with the help of Paul Terry, one of the army’s most accomplished lawyers; Terry’s co-counsel, who happens to be Brian’s sister, Meghan; and Kate’s unwavering support. But before the case is over, Brian will learn that families, like war, can break the sturdiest of souls – and hardest of hearts.

 When beautiful advertising executive Maddie Fitzgerald is attacked in a New Orleans hotel, she thinks that she’s a victim of random, senseless violence. FBI agent Sam McCabe thinks otherwise – that she’s the target of a serial killer who’s eluded the FBI for weeks. He also knows that there’s only one way to catch him: use Maddie as the enticing bait. But as McCabe’s intimate protection ignites irresistible passion, Maddie finds herself in greater danger than she believed possible – and closer to the killer than she ever imagined…

Mailbox Monday is on tour, with October’s location being at Savvy Verse & Wit.

Well after missing last week’s edition because I didn’t have any books come in the mail, my mailbox was bursting this week! Now if only I could get out of my reading slump! Here’s what I got:

From Paperbackswap Box-of-Books:

In the world of high power and big business, Project Peace was anything but cash efficient. That’s why the President was targeted for assassination and his daughter kidnapped. That’s why presidential publicist Matt Boyle was putting his life on the line, playing the most dangerous game in the world – where winner takes all … and losers die.

 

 

 

 A man burdened by his past, former top homicide cop Justin Westwood has retreated to a small-town Long Island police force. Drowning his troubles in mindless traffic duty and lots of scotch, he’s awakened to action when a young woman journalist is brutally murdered. She had recently made some errors in the obituary of a man from a local retirement home, but that’s not the kind of mistake that brings professional hit men to your door – or the FBI to town. Attempting to unravel the puzzle, Justin finds that everyone – the cops, the FBI, and one of the strangest professional killing teams ever seen – seems to be one step ahead of him, disposing of witnesses and setting him up for the fall. But this reality check is just what Justin needs, and he’ll stop at nothing to discover the true meaning of “Aphrodite” – and maybe save himself.

 

 Two young drifters, Nate and Cat, are forced by stress and circumstance to give up their infant daughter Willa for adoption. For seventeen years, Willa has lived in elegant prosperity with Joe and Candace Golding, her adoptive parents, in the Massachusetts Berkshires, where she attends the elite, private Pioneer School. But the Goldings have fled a mysterious past, and when a cleaned-up Nate arrives at Pioneer to teach English, the well-varnished facade of an idyllic small town begins to crack.

 

 

 For Danny Cray, a struggling artist and part-time private investigator, the offer is too good to be true. A wealthy, enigmatic lawyer, Jude Belzer, would like to retain Danny for a little damage control. Belzer’s client, an elusive billionaire, is the target of a vicious campaign by the Italian press that threatens to destroy his reputation. Belzer wants Danny to find out who is responsible – and he will pay handsomely. But the more Danny probes, the more apparent it becomes that nothing is what it seems. From the powerful world of Washington, D.C., to the ancient grandeur of Rome, from the mysteries of Istanbul to the high-stakes drama of Silicon Valley, Danny is suddenly embroiled in a conspiracy that is dark, far-reaching, and unsettling.

 

 

 Journalist Katherine Nikulasson’s father, Gustav, noted historian and archaeologist, has been killed in a plane crash. Some of his papers, now missing, lead Katherine to question the veracity of the accident report and the loyalty of her father’s longtime friend, Sheppard Wilde. A search for the truth takes Katherine to Wilde’s estate in England where she uncovers a conspiracy that shakes her to the core. Unaware she has now become a pawn in that conspiracy, an unwitting Katherine is kidnapped by Enrique Quisette, leader of an art smuggling syndicate, a man who will destroy anyone who stands in the way of what he wants. Wilde knows what Quisette wants. And he knows he must find Katherine before she’s of no further use to Quisette. Using every resource from the lust underworld of smuggling to the grimy back streets of Athens, Wilde begins a race against time. It is not his only challenge. For three powerful people, each risking his life, once signed an extraordinary agreement. Its intent: Protect the heritage of an ancient people, one of the world’s richest remaining treasures. Now Wilde must not only rescue Katherine but uphold the secret he has sworn to protect in…

 New York’s trendy magazines are a source of peril when a killer enacts a bizarre dance of death, using the personal ads to lure his victims. After college, best friends Erin Kelley and Darcy Scott move to the city to pursue exciting careers. Erin is a promising jewelry designer, Darcy finds success as a decorator. On a lark, Darcy persuades Erin to help their TV producer friend research the kinds of people who place personal ads. It seems like innocent fun … until Erin disappears. Erin’s body is found on an abandoned Manhattan pier – on one foot is her own shoe, on the other, a high-heeled dancing slipper. Soon after, startling communiques from the killer reveal that Erin is not the first victim of this “dancing shoe murderer.” And, if the killer has his way, she won’t be his last. Next on his death list is Darcy.

 

 Between December 1968 and October 1969 a hooded serial killer called Zodiac terrorized San Francisco. Claiming responsibility for thirty-seven murders, he manipulated the media with warnings, dares, and bizarre cryptograms that baffled FBI code-breakers. Then as suddenly as the murders began, Zodiac disappeared into the Bay Area fog forever and was never brought to justice. After painstaking investigation, and more than thirty years of research, Robert Graysmith finally exposes Zodiac’s true identity. With overwhelming evidence he reveals the twisted private life that led to the crimes, and provides startling theories as to why they stopped. America’s greatest unsolved mystery has finally been solved.

 

 

 The end of her high-profile broadcasting career came too soon for TV journalist Alison Reynolds – bounced off the air by executives who wanted a “younger face.” With a divorce from her cheating husband of ten years also pending, there is nothing keeping her in LA any longer. Cut loose from her moorings, Ali is summoned back home to Sedona, Arizona, by the death of a childhood friend. Once there she seeks solace in the comforting rhythms of her parents’ diner, the Sugarloaf Cafe, and launches an on-line blog as therapy for others who have been similarly cut loose. But when threatening posts begin appearing, Ali finds out that running a blog is far more up-close and personal than sitting behind a news desk. And far more dangerous. Suddenly something dark and deadly is swirling around her life … and a killer may be hunting her next.

 

 Mary Bergen is a clairvoyant, able to foresee murders that will happen in the near future, but unable to prevent them from taking place. But, now she is up against a power stronger than her own, a power that is taking over her and trying to kill her before she can identify it.

 

 

 

 

 Once the prosecutor was a young law student. Once the dead man was an honest lawyer. Now Stella Marz stares at the body of her former lover, hanging from a doorway in a gruesome tableau. For Stella Marz, the search for Jack Novak’s killer leads into another bizarre homicide case, back through her own past and through the city where she was born and where now – a good Catholic girl turned career woman – she is in exile. Somewhere in this city an unholy alliance of big money, big plans, and dark secrets is fueling a great American revival. And somehow Stella Marz will bring the darkness into the light – no matter what it reveals, no matter who it destroys…

 

 

 In Copenhagen a suspicious bookstore fire propels Commander Gray Pierce on a relentless hunt across four continents – and into a terrifying mystery surrounding horrific experiments once performed in a now-abandoned laboratory buried in a hollowed-out mountain in Poland. In the mountains of Nepal in a remote monastery, Buddhist monks inexplicably turn to cannibalism and torture – while Painter Crowe, director of Sigma Force, begins to show signs of the same baffling, mind-destroying malady … and Lisa Cummings, a dedicated American doctor, becomes the target of a brutal clandestine assassin. now only Gray Pierce and Sigma Force can save a world suddenly in terrible jeopardy. Because a new order is on the rise – an annihilating nightmare growing at the heart of the greatest mystery of all: the origin of life.

 

 On a cold winter night in a small Minnesota town in 1979, someone comes looking for Grace Meade. She is killed and her house is set ablaze. Incredibly, the prime suspect is her own daughter, Jillian. Rescued from the burning house, Jillian Meade is hospitalized, unable – or unwilling – to speak. After an attempt to take her own life, Jillian’s doctor gives her a blank journal to encourage her to write about her mother’s death. Unaware of what has happened, FBI Special Agent Alex Cruz comes to Havenwood, Minnesota, to interview Jillian. Two elderly women were found murdered in their homes in England, and Jillian, it seems, was the last person to see both women alive. When he learns that Jillian’s own mother met a similar fate, he realizes that there is far more going on than anyone ever imagined. When Jillian suddenly disappears, Cruz has only her journal to decipher the story of Grace and Jillian Meade. A story of a wartime heist of Nazi gold, of unforgivable betrayals and ruthless actions. A deadly secret from the past, Cruz learns, has surfaced. And if he doesn’t find Jillian soon, she, too, may be made to pay the ultimate price.

Mailbox Monday is on tour, with October’s location being at Savvy Verse & Wit.

Only one book this week, but a good one that I’m looking forward to!

     The world changes for Ethan Gage – one time assistant to the renowned Ben Franklin – on a night in post-revolutionary Paris, when he wins a mysterious medallion in a card game. Framed soon after for the murder of a prostitute and facing the grim prospect of either prison or death, the young expatriate American barely escapes France with his life – choosing instead to accompany the new emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte, on his glorious mission to conquer Egypt. With Lord Nelson’s fleet following close behind, Gage sets out on the adventure of a lifetime. And in a land of ancient wonder and mystery, with the help of a beautiful Macedonian slave, he will come to realize that the unusual prize he won at the gaming table may be the key to solving one of history’s greatest and most perilous riddles: who built the Great Pyramids … and why?