Labyrinth » (Reprint)

Kate Mosse is the co-founder and honorary director of the Orange Prize for Fiction and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

July 2005. In the Pyrenees mountains near Carcassonne, Alice, a volunteer at an archaeological dig, stumbles into a cave and makes a startling discovery-two crumbling skeletons, strange writings on the walls, and the pattern of a labyrinth.

Eight hundred years earlier, on the eve of a brutal crusade that will rip apart southern France, a young woman named Alais is given a ring and a mysterious book for safekeeping by her father. The book, he says, contains the secret of the true Grail, and the ring, inscribed with a labyrinth, will identify a guardian of the Grail. Now, as crusading armies gather outside the city walls of Carcassonne, it will take a tremendous sacrifice to keep the secret of the labyrinth safe.

Library Journal

"Three secrets. Two women. One Grail." That's how the publisher sums up this first book from the cofounder of Britain's noted Orange Prize, who was honored as a European Woman of Achievement in 2000. While volunteering at a dig in the Pyrenees, Alice discovers two skeletons, several artifacts, and the drawing of a labyrinth. They lead her back to a woman named -Alais, whose father entrusted her with the secret of the Grail at the time of the-Albigensian heresy. Foreign rights sold to nine countries [rights sold in an additional 22 countries]. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.