The Book of Blood and Shadow

Doing research in Prague, high school senior Nora is caught up in an ancient competition between two secret societies racing to build an alchemical device intended to provide limitless knowledge and communion with God. This is a thorough mixture of contemporary American adolescence, the sixteenth-century occult, and atmospheric, historical substance, all dished up with a convoluted plot in Da Vinci Code mode.

When high school senior Nora is assigned to translate Elizabeth Weston's Latin letters of the 1590s rather than decode the mysterious, medieval Voynich manuscript for a research project, at first she's insulted. Then she realizes that the letters offer a vital key to the design of the Lumen Dei, an ancient alchemical device intended to give man limitless knowledge and communion with God. When her best friend and fellow researcher is murdered and her new boyfriend disappears, Nora's caught up in an ancient competition between two secret societies whose race to build the Lumen Dei first began in Renaissance Prague -- and who will kill to find out what Nora knows. As Nora searches for her vanished boyfriend throughout Prague, she becomes ever more mired in deception, double deception, murder, and theological conflict. This is a thorough mixture of contemporary American adolescence, the sixteenth-century occult, and atmospheric, historical substance, all dished up with a convoluted plot in Da Vinci Code mode. An afterword describes the historical basis of the real Voynich manuscript and sixteenth-century poet Elizabeth Weston. deirdre f. baker