The Scroll
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An ancient scroll draws a bookseller into a chilling mystery in this short story from the New York Times–bestselling author of The Cater Street Hangman. Monty Danforth finds the tin buried beneath a shipment of leather-bound classics. Inside is a millennia-old vellum manuscript written in an unfamiliar but unmistakably ancient language. Danforth tries to photocopy and photograph it, but he ends up with blank images, as though the ink were made of something impervious to modern technology. As the scroll's mystery enchants him, this hapless bookseller falls into a cutthroat conspiracy that he may never escape. Soon a dead-eyed old man and his granddaughter come calling for the scroll. Danforth refuses to sell them the manuscript, but they will not be the last to demand it. Powerful forces crave the secrets locked within this ancient document, and Danforth will survive only if he can master its power. The Bibliomysteries are a series of short tales about deadly books, by top mystery authors.
Anne Perry
Anne Perry (1938–2023) was a bestselling author of historical detective fiction, most notably the Thomas and Charlotte Pitt series and the William Monk series, both set in Victorian England. Her first book, The Cater Street Hangman (1979), launched both the Pitt series and her career as a premier writer of Victorian mysteries. Other novels in the series include Resurrection Row, Death in the Devil’s Acre, and Silence in Hanover Close, as well as more than twenty others. The William Monk series of novels, featuring a Victorian police officer turned private investigator, includes Funeral in Blue, The Twisted Root, and The Silent Cry. In addition to these series, Perry also authored the World War I novels No Graves as Yet, Shoulder the Sky, Angels in the Gloom, and others, as well as several collections of short stories. Perry’s novels have appeared on bestseller lists around the world and have sold more than twenty-five million books in print worldwide.
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