Crucesignati

From the author of THE LION AND THE ROSE, THE AETHELING'S BRIDE, and THE TRINITY CROWN comes a modern-day historical thriller unlike any other. When Abdul Mansour Rahman, a brilliant nineteen-year-old Iranian video game designer, falls in with an emerging terrorist group and decides to attempt his most audacious project yet -- bringing the medieval Muslim hero Saladin, champion of the crusades and legendary opponent of Richard the Lionheart, back to life -- it sets off a dangerous chain of events in a fast-paced, high-stakes adventure across the globe. As CIA agent Talia Montcarro tries to track Rahman down, she finds herself assigned to an even stranger job: supervising the eventful resurrection of Richard the Lionheart himself, who has also been brought back to life in an attempt to defeat Saladin's legacy once and for all. Working with an uptight Cambridge professor and a disgraced ex-Royal Navy captain, who has a hidden agenda of his own, Talia is in a race against time to stop an increasingly dangerous Rahman, control the perilous repercussions of "immortality technology," and come face to face with some unimaginably dark family secrets of her own.

Based on an actual quote in a twelfth-century chronicle, CRUCESIGNATI is a spellbinding, genre-bending page-turner that explores the ongoing war on terror in the context of the medieval crusades and some of their most famous champions, who have to join forces to survive in a bewildering, treacherous modern world that has changed beyond their imagination -- and yet in some ways, stayed very much the same. By turns humorous and heartbreaking, it incorporates questions of religion, science, technology, virtual reality, and more, and is filled with diverse, complex characters. Part sci-fi/speculative fiction, part dark modern satire, part historical novel, and part techno-thriller, CRUCESIGNATI is uniquely poised to speak to our fractured, uneasy political climate, in a world increasingly focused on the threat of ISIS, Islamophobia, and extremism from all sides, and to challenge perceptions of past and present alike.