Louis Bayard – författare

“Shockingly clever and devoutly unsentimental...reads like a lost classic. Bayard reinvigorates historical fiction.”- New York Times Book Review

An ingenious tale of murder and revenge at West Point, featuring a retired detective and a young cadet named Edgar Allan Poe--from the author of Courting Mr. Lincoln.

At West Point Academy in 1830, the calm of an October evening is shattered by the discovery of a young cadet''s body swinging from a rope. The next morning, an even greater horror comes to light. Someone has removed the dead man''s heart. Augustus Landor—who acquired some renown in his years as a New York City police detective—is called in to discreetly investigate. It''s a baffling case Landor must pursue in secret, for the scandal could do irreparable damage to the fledgling institution. But he finds help from an unexpected ally—a moody, young cadet with a penchant for drink, two volumes of poetry to his name, and a murky past that changes from telling to telling. The strange and haunted Southern poet for whom Landor develops a fatherly affection, is named Edgar Allan Poe.

From Louis Bayard, an ancient mystery, a lost letter, and a timeless love unleash a long-buried web of intrigue that spans four centuriesIn the late sixteenth century, five brilliant scholars gather under the cloak of darkness to discuss God, politics, astronomy, and the black arts. Known as the School of Night, they meet in secret to avoid the wrath of Queen Elizabeth. But one of the men, Thomas Harriot, has secrets of his own, secrets he shares with one person only: the servant woman he loves.In modern-day Washington, D.C., disgraced Elizabethan scholar Henry Cavendish has been hired by the ruthless antiquities collector Bernard Styles to find a missing letter. The letter dates from the 1600s and was stolen by Henry''s close friend, Alonzo Wax. Now Wax is dead and Styles wants the letter back. But the letter is an object of interest to others, too. It may be the clue to a hidden treasure; it may contain the long-sought formula for alchemy; it most certainly will prove the existence of the group of men whom Shakespeare dubbed the School of Night but about whom little is known. Joining Henry in his search for the letter is Clarissa Dale, a mysterious woman who suffers from visions that only Henry can understand. In short order, Henry finds himself stumbling through a secretive world of ancient perils, caught up in a deadly plot, and ensnared in the tragic legacy of a forgotten genius.

A shared quest and a mysterious cabal, four centuries apart . . . When Henry Cavendish attends the funeral of an old friend, the last thing he expects is to be given a business proposition. A handsome sum to retrieve a document that was in his friend''s possession when he died - a letter from Sir Walter Ralegh. Henry accepts the challenge, despite severe misgivings about his sinister new employer. Four centuries earlier, in Elizabethan England, another quest is playing out. Thomas Harriot, once a member of the mysterious School of Night, a group whose members included the toast of Elizabethan society, has shut himself off from the world. Working day and night, he devotes himself secretly to his experiments. As both searches deepen, the two men realise that there are forces at work against them. Harriot''s work is threatened by discovery and Henry''s search becomes a deadly one, when someone close to him dies in mysterious circumstances. The School of Night is the story of a quest that spans centuries, of alliances forged in unexpected circumstances and of men who will stop at nothing to get what they want.

April 1914. Former US President Theodore Roosevelt and his son Kermit have embarked on a dangerous expedition down an uncharted river in the Brazilian Amazon. Threatened as they are by disease, drowning and starvation, an even greater peril awaits them when they are captured by a local Indian tribe, the mysterious Cinta Larga, and forced to hunt for a savage creature laying waste to the jungle''s inhabitants. In their search for the elusive beast, they find unexpected allies in a young mother and her half-caste child. But with hopes, dreams and lives at stake, father and son must confront the fissures in their own relationship and the dark secrets from their shared past. This exciting psychological thriller, inspired by actual historical events and figures, charts an audacious journey through the Amazonian heart of darkness and explores the demons that live within and without.