Forgeries...theft...lies...manipulation. The medieval manuscript that graduate student Christina Desroches is translating for her dissertation is anything but ordinary. Most worrisome: the narrator of the text repeatedly and strongly warns of the dangers of translating it. When the murder of her mentor convinces Christina that something in the ancient manuscript is still important enough to kill for, her scholarly research becomes a desperate quest that has her racing from New York, to Paris, to the remote French village of Sainte Enimie, deep in the Tarn River Gorges. This is a place where the river has carved rocks into grotesque formations. Nearly deserted villages cling to crumbling cliffs. Dark legends abound. It's a world in which history has left many marks, but all is not as it seems. Nothing is written in stone as Christina fights to solve a mystery that is literally in her blood.
Written in Stone is scholarly mystery with a side of romance and ample, well-paced suspense and adventure. Medievalists, lovers of history, and fans of smart thrillers like Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons, Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose, Arturo Perez-Reverte's The Flanders Panel, Kate Mosse's Labyrinth, and Katherine Neville's The Eight will read this in a single sitting.