Bruce Cable owns a popular bookstore in the sleepy resort town of Santa Rosa on Camino Island in Florida. He makes his real money, though, as a prominent dealer in rare books. Very few people know that he occasionally dabbles in the black market of stolen books and manuscripts. Mercer Mann is a young novelist with a severe case of writer's block who has recently been laid off from her teaching position. She is approached by an elegant, mysterious...

A mysterious manuscript discovered in the tomb of Charlemagne sends Cotton Malone on a perilous international quest that takes him and twin sisters with their own agenda from an ancient German cathedral to the harsh, unforgiving world of Antarctica in pursuit of the truth about the death of his father on a classified sub mission beneath Antarctica.