Two Princeton University seniors are struggling to solve the mysteries of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, a cryptic text that has baffled scholars for 500 years. When a long-lost clue surfaces, they have a chance to decipher the final secret. But when a fellow scholar of the text is murdered for knowing too much, they realize that they know even more.

This remarkable audiobook will challenge your preconceptions of the Dark Ages. Written by internationally-acclaimed historian Thomas Cahill, it paints an accessible and revealing portrait of medieval times. As Europe reaches intellectual stagnation and decline, Ireland bursts forth as a vigorous haven of scholarship in its first century of literacy. How the Irish Saved Civilization will change forever the way we look at our past, and ourselves.

Witch and Yale historian Diana Bishop discovers an enchanted manuscript, attracting the attention of 1,500-year-old vampire Matthew Clairmont. The orphaned daughter of two powerful witches, Bishop prefers intellect, but relies on magic when her discovery of a palimpsest documenting the origin of supernatural species releases an assortment of undead who threaten, stalk, and harass her. Deep in the stacks of Oxford's Bodleian Library, young scholar...

"Three friends. Two broken promises. One missing manuscript. As a senior acquisitions editor for Fog Harbor Books in San Francisco, Ingrid Erikson has rejected many a manuscript for lack of defined conflict and dramatic irony -- two elements her current life possesses in spades. In the months following the death of her childhood best friend and international bestselling author Cecelia Campbell, Ingrid has not only lost her ability to escape into fiction...

"In Boston, as the Golden Age of Piracy comes to a bloody close, Hannah Masury - bound out to service at a waterfront inn since childhood - is ready to take her life into her own hands. When a man is hanged for piracy in the town square and whispers of a treasure in the Caribbean spread, Hannah is forced to flee for her life, disguising herself as a cabin boy in the pitiless crew of the notorious pirate Edward "Ned" Low. To earn the freedom to choose...

Describes how a group of Timbuktu librarians enacted a daring plan to smuggle the city's great collection of rare Islamic manuscripts away from the threat of desctuction at the hands of Al Quaeda militants to the safety of southern Mali.