The Book without Words

The Book With­out Words is a vol­ume of blank parch­ment pages. Or so it might seem. But for a green-eyed read­er filled with great desire, it may reveal the dark mag­ic of Northum­bria, includ­ing the for­got­ten arts of mak­ing gold and achiev­ing immor­tal­i­ty. For gen­er­a­tions its mag­ic has been pro­tect­ed from those who would exploit it. But on a ter­ri­ble day of death and destruc­tion, The Book With­out Words falls into the hands of a des­per­ate boy.

Many years lat­er, that boy, Thorston, is an old man on the brink of real­iz­ing his dan­ger­ous dream—when he falls down, dead. Now his ser­vant, Sybil, and his mag­i­cal talk­ing raven, Odo, must face their fate. With their mas­ter gone, will they be evict­ed into the cold, decay­ing streets of Ful­worth to fend for them­selves? Or can they some­how unlock the secrets of The Book With­out Words and reap the pre­sumed ben­e­fits of lim­it­less gold and eter­nal life? But Sybil and Odo soon learn that noth­ing is as it appears to be: secrets are not secrets, gold is not gold. Most impor­tant of all, even their master’s death and their own lives are not cer­tain.

Set in ear­ly medieval Eng­land and rich with mys­tery and atmos­phere, this is a thought-pro­vok­ing fable about life and death, greed and betray­al, mag­ic and secrets.