Ein historischer Roman und gleichzeitig ein moderner Thriller. Im Zentrum steht eine Frau aus Idaho, Ariel Behn, Expertin für Nuklearmüll. Nach dem mysteriösen Tod eines ihr sehr nahestehenden Cousins wird sie Erbin von Familienpapieren, einem Packen uralter vergilbter Manuskripte. Dieser Besitz katapultiert sie über Nacht ins Zentrum einer internationalen Verschwörung.

Informationen zum Autor Katherine Neville was a global executive in data processing and was a vice president of the Bank of America for many years. As an international consultant, she delivered computer systems for corporations and governments around the world. She was for some years a commercial photographer, professional model, and painter. Katherine Neville's first novel, The Eight, was an international bestseller. Her second novel, A Calculated Risk, was a New York Times Notable Book. Her novels have been translated into more than fifteen languages. She lives in Virginia and abroad. Klappentext When her cousin is slain by an unknown assassin, Ariel Behn becomes the sole heir to a family legacy: a sinister cache of manuscripts that thrusts her into the deadly center of international intrigue--and an age-old enigma that spans the centuries. Whoever assembles and interprets the cryptic clues of this ancient mystery will possess the power to control the fate of the world. What strange powers lie hidden within the manuscripts? Splashed against a lavish backdrop that sweeps from the rise of the Roman Empire to the fall of the Berlin Wall, THE MAGIC CIRCLE finds one woman standing at the center of it all: Ariel Behn. As she races across continents to reveal the dark secrets buried in her family's past, she begins to unlock the chilling truth of the coming millennium. . . . Leseprobe Snake River, Idaho Early Spring, 1989 It was snowing. It had been snowing for days. It seemed the snow would never end. I had been driving through the thick of it since well before dawn. I stopped at midnight in Jackpot, Nevada, the only pink neon glow in the sky through hundreds of miles of rocky wasteland, in my long ascent from California back to Idaho, back to my job at the nuclear site. There at Jackpot, against the jangle of slot machines, I sat at a counter and ate a grilled, blood-rare steak with fries, chugged a glass of Scotch whiskey and washed it down with a mug of hot black coffee--the multi-ingredient cure-all my uncle Earnest had always recommended to remedy this kind of stress and heartache. Then I went back out into the cold black night and hit the road again. If I hadn't stopped back in the Sierras when the first fresh snow came down for the half day of skiing I'd suddenly felt I needed to soothe my aching soul, I wouldn't have been in this predicament now, sailing along on black ice in the middle of nowhere. At least this was a nowhere that I knew well--every wrinkle of road along this trek from the Rockies to the coast. I'd crossed it often enough on business, for my job as a nuclear security expert. Ariel Behn, girl nuke. But the reason for this last jaunt was a business I'd just as soon have missed. I could feel my body, against my will, slipping into autopilot on that long, monotonous stretch of snowy highway, as the dark waters of my mind started pulling me back to a place I knew I didn't want to go. As the miles clicked away, the snow swirled around me. I heard the crunch of my studded tires as the black ice flowed beneath me. But I could not erase from my mind the dappled color of the grassy slope back there in California--the smoothly geometric pattern of those tombstones moving across it, those thin, thin layers of stone and grass. All that separated life from death--all that separated me from Sam--forever. The grass was electric green--that shimmering, wonderful green that only exists in San Francisco and only at this time of year. Against the brilliant lawn, the chalk-white gravestones marched in undulating rows across the hill. Dark eucalyptus trees towered over the cemetery between the rows of markers, their silver leaves dripping with water. I looked through the tinted windows of the limousine as we pulled from the main road and doubled back into the Presidio. I had driven this road so many times when i...

Klappentext

When her cousin is slain by an unknown assassin, Ariel Behn becomes the sole heir to a family legacy: a sinister cache of manuscripts that thrusts her into the deadly center of international intrigue--and an age-old enigma that spans the centuries. Whoever assembles and interprets the cryptic clues of this ancient mystery will possess the power to control the fate of the world.

What strange powers lie hidden within the manuscripts? Splashed against a lavish backdrop that sweeps from the rise of the Roman Empire to the fall of the Berlin Wall, THE MAGIC CIRCLE finds one woman standing at the center of it all: Ariel Behn. As she races across continents to reveal the dark secrets buried in her family's past, she begins to unlock the chilling truth of the coming millennium. . . .

Leseprobe
**Snake River, Idaho

Early Spring, 1989**

It was snowing. It had been snowing for days. It seemed the snow would never end.

I had been driving through the thick of it since well before dawn. I stopped at midnight in Jackpot, Nevada, the only pink neon glow in the sky through hundreds of miles of rocky wasteland, in my long ascent from California back to Idaho, back to my job at the nuclear site. There at Jackpot, against the jangle of slot machines, I sat at a counter and ate a grilled, blood-rare steak with fries, chugged a glass of Scotch whiskey and washed it down with a mug of hot black coffee--the multi-ingredient cure-all my uncle Earnest had always recommended to remedy this kind of stress and heartache. Then I went back out into the cold black night and hit the road again.

If I hadn't stopped back in the Sierras when the first fresh snow came down for the half day of skiing I'd suddenly felt I needed to soothe my aching soul, I wouldn't have been in this predicament now, sailing along on black ice in the middle of nowhere. At least this was a nowhere that I knew well--every wrinkle of road along this trek from the Rockies to the coast. I'd crossed it often enough on business, for my job as a nuclear security expert. Ariel Behn, girl nuke. But the reason for this last jaunt was a business I'd just as soon have missed.

I could feel my body, against my will, slipping into autopilot on that long, monotonous stretch of snowy highway, as the dark waters of my mind started pulling me back to a place I knew I didn't want to go. As the miles clicked away, the snow swirled around me. I heard the crunch of my studded tires as the black ice flowed beneath me.

But I could not erase from my mind the dappled color of the grassy slope back there in California--the smoothly geometric pattern of those tombstones moving across it, those thin, thin layers of stone and grass. All that separated life from death--all that separated me from Sam--forever.

The grass was electric green--that shimmering, wonderful green that only exists in San Francisco and only at this time of year. Against the brilliant lawn, the chalk-white gravestones marched in undulating rows across the hill. Dark eucalyptus trees towered over the cemetery between the rows of markers, their silver leaves dripping with water. I looked through the tinted windows of the limousine as we pulled from the main road and doubled back into the Presidio.

I had driven this road so many times when in the Bay Area. It was the only route from the Golden Gate Bridge to the San Francisco Marina, and it passed directly by the military cemetery we were entering. Today, observing it up close and in slow motion, it was all so beautiful, so ravishing to the eye.

"Sam would have loved being here," I said aloud, speaking for the first time during the rid…