Iain Pears

JACKET NOTES ( When art dealer Jonathan Argyll agreed to transport the Death of Socrates from a gallery in Paris to its new owner In Rome, he had no idea that such a worthless, nondescript painting would cause such a stir. First someone tries to steal it from him in a train station. Then the man he's delivering it to decides he doesn’t want it--and is brutally murdered a few hours later. Now Argyll is stuck with a painting that only the most tasteless collector could love... and he finds himself right in the middle of a murder investigation. With the bodies piling up, he must investigate the dark secrets in the paintings past--before someone with truly horrible taste decides to put him out of the picture for good...

In national bestseller The Dream of Scipio, acclaimed author Iain Pears intertwines three intellectual mysteries, three love stories, and three of the darkest moments in human history. United by a classical text called "The Dream of Scipio," three men struggle to find refuge for their hearts and minds from the madness that surrounds them in the final days of the Roman Empire, in the grim years of the Black Death, and in the direst hours of World War II.

A manic-depressive artist has been released from the psych ward just in time for the opening of his big new gallery show. But his psychiatrist has been murdered, he's the main suspect, and it looks like someone's out to kill him. As the artist spirals deeper into paranoia, can he stay alive-;and out of prison-;long enough to find the real killer?

In 1960s Oxford, Professor Henry Lytten is attempting to write a fantasy novel that forgoes the magic of his predecessors, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. He finds an unlikely confidante in his quick-witted, inquisitive young neighbor Rosie. One day, while chasing Lytten's cat, Rosie encounters a doorway in his cellar. She steps through and finds herself in an idyllic, pastoral land where Storytellers are revered above all others. There she meets a young man who is about to embark on a quest of his own--and may be the one chance Rosie has of returning home. These breathtaking adventures ultimately intertwine with the story of an eccentric psychomathematician whose breakthrough discovery will affect all of these different lives and worlds.