A riveting dual-period narrative that blends a haunting supernatural thriller with the vivid history of Tudor London Historian Annie Kendall arrives at London’s Bristol House on an assignment to research ancient artifacts from the Holy Land. She’s desperate to escape her troubled past with the help of the shadowy employer who has hired her for an unusual, but well-paid, mission. So Annie is determined to ignore the strange manifestations in her flat—including the appearance of a ghostly Carthusian monk. When she crosses paths with Geoff Harris, a well-known TV journalist and a dead ringer for the strange apparition, they are called upon to crack an enigmatic code, still unbroken after five hundred years. Widely acclaimed for her historical fiction, Beverly Swerling delivers an enchanting and epic tale of a historian and a monk half a millennium apart—and the unsolved mysteries of Tudor London that bring them together. “An intricately woven plot with voices from the past give Swerling’s latest historical thriller an otherworldly aura.” —Kirkus Reviews “Swerling adds a paranormal dimension to her latest novel, interweaving narratives set in contemporary and Tudor London. . . . Elements of romance, religious mythology, cultism, and the supernatural abound as this genre-blending thriller stretches back and forth through time to a suitably dramatic denouement.” —Booklist Beverly Swerling  is the author of many novels, including the City of Dreams series, a four-volume historical saga set in old New York. She is also a consultant to other authors and an amateur historian. She lives in Philadelphia. 1 The apartment was seven rooms, much bigger than Annie needed. But it was a four-minute walk to the British Museum, where she would be working frequently, and in the heart of Holborn, the London district that was the focus of much of her research. Not to mention the appeal of high ceilings and fireplaces and tall windows that overlooked busy Southampton Row, where double-decker buses went north and south to places called Chalk Farm and Covent Garden. “I suggest,” Mrs. Walton said, “you have a wander on your own. You must have been too jet-lagged to see it properly yesterday.” In her sixties, Annie thought. Fair, still pretty—no doubt an English rose in her day. Possibly a family resemblance to her niece, Sheila MacPherson, secretary to the director of the Shalom Foundation, the organization that had sent Annie Kendall to England. My Auntie Bea’s off to Singapore to visit her son, Dr. Kendall, just when you arrive, as it happens. I know she’d love to let her flat and have that bit of extra income, as long as she was sure the tenant would look after her things. There was a certified check drawn on Shalom’s account in the bag slung over Annie’s shoulder. She was here to sign the furnishings inventory, hand over the payment, collect the receipt, and pick up the keys. Mrs. Walton was leaving early the next morning, Tuesday, the first of May. It was agreed Annie could move in as soon after as she liked. “Go on.” Her soon-to-be landlady pressed into Annie’s hand the list of the contents of each room. “Take this with you and have a look round without me peering over your shoulder.” “Well, if you don’t mind . . .” “I do not. Off you go. I’ll be in my office if you have any questions.” According to her niece, Bea Walton managed property for absentee owners. Her office was at the far end of the apartment and could be reached by a separate door from the outside corridor—lofty ceiling, broad stairs, and a creaking old elevator—or from what she referred to as the drawing room. Imagine, Annie Kendall from Brooklyn living in a place with a drawing room. Not that there was anything particularly grand about the flat. Shabby chic, more like, with an air of things having been in place for many years. Settled. Sturdy. Comfortable. In other words, perfect. She took the papers from the onetime English rose and turned left, starting down the long hall that formed the apartment’s spine. Old sketches and drawings lined the walls, along with two nineteenth-century gilt-framed mirrors that reflected wavy, mercurous images. A mahogany half-moon table held a vase of vivid yellow tulips; another, a few feet farther along, a lighted lamp. Each formed a small oasis of brightness in the dim passage. Annie’s trained eye—she was an architectural historian—made it fifty-two feet, give or take six inches. Except for a big old-fashioned bathroom, all the rooms opened off the Southampton Row side. The first door led to Mrs. Walton’s bedroom. Annie peeked inside. Two suitcases were open on the bed, and an ironing board had been set up in front of a small TV. Next came the second bedroom, the one that would be hers. The day before—fresh off the plane from New York—she’d registered little other than a remarkable black and white mural made up of tiny overlapping pen and ink scenes of London, a helter-skelter riot that covered one entire wa