--"Malloy's work is fascinating, highly readable, and meticulously researched." Best-selling author Nathanial Philbrick. --Dr. Malloy's nonfiction has been praised for its lively style and comprehensive research. The Bookwatch called her research "astonishing" and said she "writes with flair" and the Seattle Times praised her "meticulous research and engaging writing." --Malloy's first novel uses these qualities to send heroine-sleuth Lizzie Manning into an increasingly sinister past as she uses all the tools of the historian's trade. --Called "intelligent sleuth," this first of a trilogy takes the reader from the present to the time of the Crusades. --Readers are fascinated with the process of history, as evidenced by recent fiction as different as as Byatt's Possession and The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown. --Academics as novelists, and academics as principal characters, have propelled a number of books to the bestseller l