The Queen's Cipher

England, 1571. Two men. One hunts. One hides. Neither knows the other will save his life.

Elias Thorne is a scholar who breaks codes for the Queen's spymaster. Every cipher he cracks sends men to the scaffold. He tells himself it's necessary. He's starting to doubt it.

Michael Davies is a Jesuit priest, smuggled back to England to minister to the faithful. Every mass he says is treason. He tells himself it's holy. He's starting to wonder.

As the Babington Plot unravels and the Spanish Armada gathers, Elias and Michael are pulled toward a collision—on a windswept Scottish beach, amid the wreckage of invasion and the bodies of the drowned. There, hunter and hunted will face a choice neither expected: mercy, or the law.

The Queen's Cipher is a novel about faith, betrayal, and the dangerous arithmetic of conscience—and about two enemies who become the only friends either will ever fully trust.