About the Author

Katherine Neville is the author of The Eight, The Magic Circle (a USA Today bestseller), and A Calculated Risk (a New York Times Notable Book). The Eight has been translated into more than thirty languages. In a national poll in Spain by the noted journal El País, The Eight was voted one of the top ten books of all time. Neville lives in Virginia and Washington, D.C.

Reviews

“Readers thrilled by The Da Vinci Code will relish the multi-layered secrets of The Eight.”
—MATTHEW PEARL, author of The Dante Club

“A BIG, RICH, TWO-TIERED CONFECTION OF A NOVEL . . .
A ROUSING, AMUSING GAME.”
—San Francisco Chronicle

“A fascinating piece of entertainment that manages to be both vibrant and cerebral . . . Few will find it resistible.”
—Los Angeles Times Book Review

“With alchemical skill, Neville blends modern romance, historical fiction, and medieval mystery . . . and comes up with gold.”
—People

"Readers thrilled by The Da Vinci Code will relish the multi-layered secrets of The Eight."
-MATTHEW PEARL, author of The Dante Club

"A BIG, RICH, TWO-TIERED CONFECTION OF A NOVEL . . .
A ROUSING, AMUSING GAME."
-San Francisco Chronicle

"A fascinating piece of entertainment that manages to be both vibrant and cerebral . . . Few will find it resistible."
-Los Angeles Times Book Review

"With alchemical skill, Neville blends modern romance, historical fiction, and medieval mystery . . . and comes up with gold."
-People

The Montglane Service, an ornate, jeweled chess set given to Charlemagne by the Moors, is said to hold a code which when deciphered will bring great power. Nations and individuals have schemed to possess all the pieces. As the set is dispersed during the French Revolution, a young novice risks her life to safeguard it. Alternating with her story are the present-day efforts of a U.S. computer expert and a Russian chess master to assemble the set and solve its mystery. Studying the code involves musical notation, chess strategy, Fibonacci numbers, and mysticism. This intriguing and complex first novel, while offering historical insights and interesting introductory quotations, calls occasionally for the suspension of credulity. The interweaving of fact and fiction is skillfully done. Highly recommended. BOMC selection.-- Ellen Kaye Stoppel, Drake Univ. Law Lib., Des Moines