"An impressive fiction debut. . . . Malloy mixes history and fantasy with flair and delivers a wonderfully satisfying puzzler."— "Mystery a la gothic. . . . Historian Malloy does her research proud, inserting humanity into the too-often dry history some of us suffered through in school."— "Malloy's use of medieval tales, the Knights Templar history, ancient artifacts, and naval history deftly guides the reader deeper into the character and her motivations. . . . This novel itself reads like a seafaring voyage—full of swift turns, unknown frontiers, and the desire to answer the big questions we all ask ourselves."— "Malloy provides a terrific tense thriller."— Professor Lizzie Manning is creating a centennial exhibition for her college's one hundredth anniversary. Discovering that the founder's daughter married an Italian prince with a family collection dating from the Renaissance, she travels to Bologna, where she finds ancient alligators, old master paintings, and unicorn tusks, among other rarities. But it is the unexpected mummified occupant of a sarcophagus that begs the most attention, and draws her into a mystery that spans ancient Egypt and German-occupied Italy of the 1940s. is the author of and , the first two Lizzie Manning Mysteries, and four maritime history books, including the award-winning . She has a PhD from Brown Universityand teaches maritime history at the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and museum studies at Harvard University.