About this ebook
Barcelona, Summer 2003. Three women are sacrificed to an unknown purpose, their skin carved with a cryptic alphabet, and their tongues cut from their mouths. Sent beautiful, sinister letters—clues, or confessions?—Inspector Fabregat cannot decipher the warnings within. As Barcelona explodes in revelry on the Festival of St. Joan, Natalia Hernandez, flower of the National Theatre and Catalan idol, lies broken on the steps of the Cathedral. The city bays for blood, and Fabregat chases riddles and shadows—signs that whisper of secrets beyond his grasp.
Barcelona, Winter 2014. Anna Verco—academic, book thief, savant—unearths letters hidden for centuries from a lightning-struck chapel in Mallorca. What they reveal compels her and Fabregat to reignite the Hernandez investigation. Every page she turns conceals a coded message; every street she treads leads her deeper into the labyrinth. As Fabregat baits her with suspects, and threats darken her steps, Anna hunts her own prey—the book that began it all, a medieval revelation written in the language of witches and alchemists: The Serpent Papers.
Anna believes this book will unlock the mystery.
She does not yet know she is the key.
About the author
JESSICA CORNWELL was raised in Southern California, the eldest of eight children. After graduating in English from Stanford, she completed her Masters in Directing and Dramaturgy at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and participated in research and grant projects in Oxford, India and Spain. She trained in Barcelona with Catalan theatre company La Fura dels Baus and is fluent in Spanish and Catalan. In 2010 she moved to London to work in film, and now divides her time between London and the United States. The Serpent Papers is her first novel.Web: http://annaverco.tumblr.com/www.jessicacornwell.com