S. J Parris

August 1585: Elizabethan England is on the brink of war. Sir Francis Drake is preparing to launch a daring expedition against the Spanish when a murder aboard his ship changes everything. Giordano Bruno agrees to hunt the killer down only to find that more than one deadly plot is brewing in Plymouth's murky underworld. And as Bruno tracks a murderer through its dangerous streets, he uncovers a conspiracy which threatens the future of England itself....

Three exhilarating novellas - The Secret Dead, The Academy of Secrets, and A Christmas Requiem - follow the early adventures of young priest Giordano Bruno in the dramatic days of sixteenth century Italy. Even the dead have a story to tell ... Naples, 1566. During a sweltering summer, eighteen-year-old Giordano Bruno takes his final vows at San Domenico Maggiore and is admitted to the Dominican Order - despite doubts over his tendency to ask difficult...

Summer, 1584. Sir Francis Walsingham, spymaster to Queen Elizabeth, has long suspected an undercurrent of Catholic resistance in the city that was once England's greatest centre of pilgrimage. He calls Giordano Bruno, his maverick secret agent, away from his post at the French Embassy to investigate. But when Bruno arrives in Canterbury, he has no idea of the dark secrets he's about to uncover. He must turn his detective's eye on history--on Saint...