With Halloween quickly approaching, today's selection needed to be something deliciously scary and appropriately atmospheric. I could think of nothing better than the best Dracula related tale I know, The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. It is brilliant and one of my top ten favorite books ever.
To you, perceptive reader, I bequeath my history....Late one night,
exploring her father's library, a young woman finds an ancient book and a
cache of yellowing letters. The letters are all addressed to "My dear
and unfortunate successor," and they plunge her into a world she never
dreamed of-a labyrinth where the secrets of her father's past and her
mother's mysterious fate connect to an inconceivable evil hidden in the
depths of history.The letters provide links to one of the darkest powers
that humanity has ever known-and to a centuries-long quest to find the
source of that darkness and wipe it out. It is a quest for the truth
about Vlad the Impaler, the medieval ruler whose barbarous reign formed
the basis of the legend of Dracula. Generations of historians have
risked their reputations, their sanity, and even their lives to learn
the truth about
Vlad the Impaler and Dracula. Now one young woman must decide whether to
take up this quest herself-to follow her father in a hunt that nearly
brought him to ruin years ago, when he was a vibrant young scholar and
her mother was still alive.
What does the legend of Vlad the Impaler
have to do with the modern world? Is it possible that the Dracula of
myth truly existed-and that he has lived on, century after century,
pursuing his own unknowable ends? The answers to these questions cross
time and borders, as first the father and then the daughter search for
clues, from dusty Ivy League libraries to Istanbul, Budapest, and the
depths of Eastern Europe. In city after city, in monasteries and
archives, in letters and in secret conversations, the horrible truth
emerges about Vlad the Impaler's dark reign-and about a time-defying
pact that may have kept his awful work alive down through the
ages.
Parsing obscure signs and hidden texts, reading codes worked into
the fabric of medieval monastic traditions-and evading the unknown
adversaries who will go to any lengths to conceal and protect Vlad's
ancient powers-one woman comes ever closer to the secret of her own past
and a confrontation with the very definition of evil. Elizabeth
Kostova's debut novel is an adventure of monumental proportions, a
relentless tale that blends fact and fantasy, history and the present,
with an assurance that is almost unbearably suspenseful-and utterly
unforgettable.
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