The Dark Monk

THE ANTICIPATED FOLLOWUP TO THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER, <i>THE HANGMAN S DAUGHTER</i> <br>1660: Winter has settled thick over a sleepy village in the Bavarian Alps, ensuring every farmer and servant is indoors the night a parish priest discovers he's been poisoned. As numbness creeps up his body, he summons the last of his strength to scratch a cryptic sign in the frost. <br>Following a trail of riddles, hangman Jakob Kuisl; his headstrong daughter Magdalena; and the town physician s son team up with the priest s aristocratic sister to investigate. What they uncover will lead them back to the Crusades, unlocking a troubled history of internal church politics and sending them on a chase for a treasure of the Knights Templar. <br>But they re not the only ones after the legendary fortune. A team of dangerous and mysterious monks is always close behind, tracking their every move, speaking Latin in the shadows, giving off a strange, intoxicating scent. And to throw the hangman off their trail, they have ensured he is tasked with capturing a band of thieves roving the countryside attacking solitary travelers and spreading panic. <br>Delivering on the promise of the international bestseller <i>The Hangman s Daughter</i>, once again based on prodigious historical research into Potzsch s family tree, <i>The Dark Monk</i> takes us on a whirlwind tour through the occult hiding places of Bavaria s ancient monasteries, bringing to life an unforgettable compassionate hangman and his tenacious daughter, painting a robust tableau of a seventeenth-century Bavaria still negotiating the lasting impacts of war, and quickening our pulses with a gripping, mesmerizing mystery. "