Anna is an American librarian working at the Bradley Library in London. She is enjoying her quiet life of tea, poor lighting, and studying fifteenth-century manuscripts, until the night her mentor is killed and she is saved by a strange man who needs her help. Now she is caught up in a centuries-old hunt for a magical text, one group wanting to safeguard it, the other wanting to share the knowledge it contains with the highest bidder. Everyone seems to believe Anna knows where the book may be, but all that she knows is that she is way over her head.