Frank Schätzing

"In 2025, entrepreneur Julian Orley opens the first-ever hotel on the moon. But Orley Enterprises deals in more than space tourists--it also operates the world's only space elevator, which in addition to allowing the very wealthy to play tennis on the lunar surface connects Earth with the moon and enables the transportation of helium-3, the fuel of the future, back to the planet. Julian has invited twenty-one of the world's richest and most powerful...

In the year 1260, a great cathedral, the most ambitious ecclesiastical building in all of Christendom, is rising high above the bustling city of Cologne under the supervision of the architect Gerhard Morart. Far below the soaring spires and flying buttresses, a bitter war rages between the archbishop and the city's ruling merchant families-a deadly conflict that claims Morart as the first of its many victims. But there is a witness to the murder of...