A secret city and a one-hundred-year-old murder reveal a deadly conspiracy of fantastic proportions: Strindberg's Star will chill your bones in the summer's heat...

Taklamakan desert, 1895
A new Pompeii has come to light and, with it, two remarkable artefacts, found in a hidden burial chamber. A metal ankh and star - covered in strange inscriptions, feather-light and cool to the touch.

Svalbard, 1897
On the skerried islands of Svalbard, a hydrogen balloon is readied for a polar voyage. Publicly, it is a patriotic attempt to put Sweden in the lead of the race to the North Pole. Privately, the three men on board have another objective. But S. A Andree, Knut Frænkel and Nils Strindberg will never be seen alive again.

Falun, Sweden, 2011
260 meters under the earth, in a long-flooded mineshaft, a diver's torchbeam plays over a mouldering corpse with a fist-sized hole in its forehead. Skeletal fingers clutch a metal amulet. It is the key to the annals of a secret history so deeply buried that the few who knew of it though it lost forever. Until now...

"This breathtaking debut novel, lavish with historic detail and colorful panorama, brilliantly evokes the mysterious, underwater, middle-earth worlds of Jules Verne, interwoven with the pulse-pounding, countdown techno-thrillers of James Bond." - Katherine Neville, Author of The Eight