Chapter 1
There was nothing remarkable about the leather-bound book. In the eyes of an ordinary historian, it would not have differed from hundreds of other manuscripts in Oxford's Bodleian Library, ancient and worn as it was. But I knew there was something special about it from the moment I picked it up.
Duke Humphrey's Reading Room was crowded this afternoon in late september, and orders for library materials were quickly being met now that the summer crowding of visiting scholars was over and the fall semester frenzy had not yet begun. Still, I was surprised when Sean stopped me at the counter.