Katherine Neville’s groundbreaking novel, The Eight, dazzled audiences more than twenty years ago and set the literary stage for the epic thriller. A quest for a mystical chess service that once belonged to Charlemagne, it spans two centuries and three continents, and intertwines historic and modern plots, archaeological treasure hunts, esoteric riddles, and puzzles encrypted with clues from the ancient past. Now the electrifying global adventure continues, in Neville’s long anticipated sequel: THE FIRE

2003, Colorado: Alexandra Solarin is summoned home to her family’s ancestral Rocky Mountain hideaway for her mother’s birthday. Thirty years ago, her parents, Cat Velis and Alexander Solarin, believed that they had scattered the pieces of the Montglane Service around the world, burying with them the secrets of the power that comes with possessing it. But Alexandra arrives to find that her mother is missing and that a series of strategically placed clues, followed swiftly by the unexpected arrival of a mysterious assortment of houseguests, indicates that something sinister is afoot. 

When she inadvertently discovers from her aunt, the chess grandmaster Lily Rad, that the most powerful piece of Charlemagne’s service has suddenly resurfaced and the Game has begun again, Alexandra is swept into a journey that takes her from Colorado to the Russian wilderness and at last into the heart of her own hometown: Washington D.C.

1822, Albania: Thirty years after the French Revolution, when the chess service was unearthed, all of Europe hovers on the brink of the War of Greek Independence. Ali Pasha, the most powerful ruler in the Ottoman Empire, has angered the sultan and is about to be attacked by Turkish forces. Now he sends the only person he can rely upon–his young daughter, Haidee–on a dangerous mission to smuggle a valuable relic out of Albania, through the mountains and over the sea, to the hands of the one man who might be able to save it.

Haidee’s journey from Albania to Morocco to Rome to Greece, and into the very heart of the Game, will result in revelations about the powerful chess set and its history that will lead at last to the spot where the service was first created more than one thousand years before: Baghdad.

Blending exquisite prose and captivating history with nonstop suspense, Neville again weaves an unforgettable story of peril, action, and intrigue.


From the Hardcover edition.

THE BLACK LAND

Wyrd oft nereth unfaegne eorl, ponne his ellen deah.
(Unless he is already doomed, fortune is apt to favor the man who keeps his nerve.)
--Beowulf

Mesa Verde, Colorado Spring 2003

BEFORE I'D EVEN REACHED THE HOUSE, I KNEW SOMETHING was wrong. Very wrong. Even though on the surface, it all seemed picture-perfect.

The steep, sweeping curve of drive was blanketed deep in snow and lined with stately rows of towering Colorado blue spruce. Their snow-covered branches sparkled like rose quartz in the early morning light. Atop the hill, where the driveway flattened and spread out for parking, I pulled up my rented Land Rover in front of the lodge.

A lazy curl of blue-gray smoke rose from the moss rock chimney that formed the center of the building. The rich scent of pine smoke pervaded the air, which meant that--although I might not be warmly welcomed after all this time--at least I was expected.

To confirm this, I saw that my mother's truck and jeep were both sitting side-by-side in the former horse stable at the edge of the parking area. I did find it odd, though, that the drive had not yet been plowed and there were no tracks. If I were expected, wouldn't someone have cleared a path?

Now that I was here at last, in the only place I'd ever called home, you would think I could finally relax. But I couldn't shake the sense that something was wrong.

Our family lodge had been built at about this same period in the prior century, by neighboring tribes, for my great-great-grandmother, a pioneering mountain lass. Constructed of hand-hewn rock and massive tree trunks chinked together, it was a huge log cabin that was shaped like an octagon--patterned after a hogan or sweat lodge--with many-paned windows facing in each cardinal direction, like a vast, architectural compass rose.

Each female descendant had lived here at one time or another, including my mother and me. . . . So what was wrong with me? Why couldn't I ever come here without this sense of impending doom? I knew why, of course. And so did my mother. It was the thing we never spoke about. That's why--when I had finally left home for good--my mother understood. She'd never insisted, like other mothers, that I come back for familial visits.

That is, not until today.

But then, my presence today hadn't exactly been by invitation--it was more of a summons, a cryptic message that Mother had left on my home phone back in Washington D.C., when she knew very well I'd be off at work.

She was inviting me, she said, to her birthday party.

And that, of course, was a big part of the problem.

You see, my mother didn't have birthdays. She'd never had birthdays.

I don't mean she was concerned about her youth or appearance or wished to lie about her age--in fact, she looked more youthful each year.

But the strange truth was, she didn't want anyone outside of our family even to know when her birthday was.

This secrecy, combined with a few other idiosyncracies--like the fact that she'd been in hermetic retreat up on top of this mountain for the past ten years, ever since . . . the thing we never spoke about--all went far to explain why there were those who may have perceived my mother, Catherine Velis, as a pretty eccentric duck.

The other part of my current problem was that I hadn't been able to contact my mother for an explanation of her sudden revelation. She'd answered neither her phone nor the messages I'd left for her, here at the lodge. The alternate number she'd given me was clearly not right--it was missing some final digits.

With my first true...

 

Twenty years after THE EIGHT, Katherine Neville leads listeners on a merry chase in her sequel as heroine Alexandra Solarin searches for a chess set that holds the secret to immortality. Narrator Susan Denaker navigates the maze of mysterious puzzles, which draw on philosophical and mathematical theories, with clear diction, an affinity for accents, well-placed pauses, and emphasis that lets listeners know exactly where they are at all times. As the story begins, Alexandra must break codes to enter the home of her estranged mother, and Denaker soon convinces listeners of Alexandra's initial confusion and quick mind. Also coming through in Denaker's characterization is the heroine's longing for her dead father and her missing mother. Denaker's nuanced depiction of Neville's main character wins our compassion as she untangles one mystery after another. S.W. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

 

"A big, rich, two-tiered confection of a novel . . . a rousing, amusing game."

 

"A fascinating piece of entertainment . . . few will find it resistible."

 

"Readers thrilled by The Da Vinci Code will relish the multilayered secrets of The Eight."

 

"With an alchemical skill, Neville blends a modern romance, historical fiction, and a medieval mystery . . . and comes up with gold."

 

"A feminist answer to Raiders of the Lost Ark."

 

"Impossible to put down."

 

The Fire by Katherine Neville
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