What links Isaac Newton to a series of horrific murders and a centuries-old quest for occult knowledge and the secret of the Philosopher's Stone?
Oxford, 2006: a young woman is found brutally murdered, her throat cut. Her heart has been removed and in its place lies an ancient gold coin. Twenty-four hours later, another woman is found dead. The MO is identical, except that this time her brain has been removed, and a silver coin lies glittering in the bowl of her skull.
New Yorker Laura Niven is a former journalist visiting the city where she'd been a student twenty years earlier. Along with her estranged lover, she begins to research these horrific murders: murders which she soon discovers are not just confined to the here and now. A story gradually emerges that connects the members of the Royal Society in the 1600s - Isaac Newton, Edmund Halley, and Christopher Wren - with alchemy, and the search for The Philosopher's Stone.
With this knowledge, Laura becomes the one person who can rewrite history and stop the killer striking.
