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Ex-Libris
Ross King

Ex-Libris

Responding to a cryptic summons to a remote country house, London bookseller Isaac Inchbold finds himself responsible for restoring a magnificent library pillaged during the English Civil War, and in the process slipping from the surface of 1660s London into an underworld of spies and smugglers, ciphers and forgeries. As he assembles the fragments of a complex historical mystery, Inchbold learns how Sir Ambrose Plessington, founder of the library, escaped from Bohemia on the eve of the Thirty Years War with plunder from the Imperial Library. Inchbold’s hunt for one of these stolen volumes—a lost Hermetic text—soon casts him into an elaborate intrigue; his fortunes hang on the discovery of the missing manuscript but his search reveals that the elusive volume is not what it seems and that he has been made an unwitting player in a treacherous game.

Book Details:

  • Author: Ross King
  • Published Year: 2001
  • Rights Sold
    • Germany: PRH Germany (Knaus)
    • Russia: Eksmo
    • Hungary: Lazi Konyvkiado
    • Italy: Edizione Sylvestre Bonnard
    • US: Walker
    • Spain: Planeta
    • Spain: Hayakawa Publishing
    • Poland: Rebis Publishing House
    • Holland: Ambo Anthos Uitgevers
    • UK: Penguin Random House
Ross King

Ross King

Ross King is the bestselling author of books on Italian, French and Canadian art and history. Among his books are Brunelleschi’s Dome (2000), Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling (2002), The Judgment of Paris (Governor General’s Award, 2006), Leonardo and The Last Supper (Governor General’s Award, 2012), and Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies (Charles Taylor Prize, 2017). He has also published two novels (Domino and Ex-Libris), a biography of Niccolò Machiavelli, an...
More about Ross King

Book Reviews

  • "A sweeping intellectual thriller … Ex-Libris is a must for anyone who enjoyed Iain Pears’ monumental An Instance of the Fingerpost or Arturo Perez-Reverte’s magnificent The Dumas Club."
    The Denver Post
  • "An ingenious intellectual puzzle."
    Newsday
  • "This book would [also] appeal to those who enjoy English language and a turn of phrase, and appreciate literary style as an artform itself."
    The Daily News
  • "A rollicking good yarn."
    Mystery Review
  • "A satisfyingly lush and lavish adventure in the world of rare books that will remind readers of The Name of the Rose."
    Detroit Free Press
  • "Entertainingly crammed with the appurtenances of Gothic romance, castles, secret codes, shadowy crypts, spies, mysterious coach rides, a distressed noblewoman, black-clad assassins."
    Miami Herald