Sign Of The Cross (novel)
''Sign of the Cross'' is the second novel by '' New York Times'' bestselling author Chris Kuzneski. First published in October 2006 by Penguin Group (USA), the religious thriller followed the exploits of Jonathon Payne and David Jones, who have been featured in all of Kuzneski's thrillers. It also introduced the character of Nick Dial, who has appeared in every Kuzneski novel since. The book was endorsed by several notable authors, including Clive Cussler, Nelson DeMille, Steve Berry, James Rollins, and Tess Gerritsen. Penguin UK released the British version in April 2007, and the book climbed to #11 on the British bestseller list. The foreign rights to ''Sign of the Cross'' have sold in more than fifteen languages. Plot summary Jonathon Payne and David "D.J." Jones are recruited to find Dr. Charles Boyd, an archeologist who recently found the Catacombs of Orvieto, the safe haven for the popes of the Middle Ages. While Boyd avoids pursuit, a series of victims turn up dead ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Chris Kuzneski
Chris Kuzneski (born 1969) is an American novelist. His eleventh novel, ''The Prisoner's Gold'', won the Thriller Award for the 2016 Book of the Year at a gala hosted by the International Thriller Writers (ITW) in New York City on July 9, 2016. His works have also been honored by the Florida Book Awards and named a Literary Guild's featured selection. Biographical sketch Born in Indiana, Pennsylvania, Kuzneski currently lives in Tampa, Florida. In the fourth grade, he wrote ''The Monster Cookbook'', which so impressed the librarian that it was bound and placed in the school library. He played football at the University of Pittsburgh where he received his undergraduate degree in writing and his master's degree in teaching. While studying at Pitt, he wrote for ''The Pitt News'', the ''Indiana Gazette'', and the ''Pittsburgh Post-Gazette''. From 1992 until 1998, he taught English and coached football in two western Pennsylvania school districts and was selected to ''Who's Who Among ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Archeologist
Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, architecture, biofact (archaeology), biofacts or ecofacts, archaeological site, sites, and cultural landscapes. Archaeology can be considered both a social science and a branch of the humanities. It is usually considered an independent academic discipline, but may also be classified as part of anthropology (in North America – the four-field approach), history or geography. Archaeologists study human prehistory and history, from the development of the first stone tools at Lomekwi in East Africa 3.3 million years ago up until recent decades. Archaeology is distinct from palaeontology, which is the study of fossil remains. Archaeology is particularly important for learning about prehistoric societies, for which, by definition, there are no written records. Prehistory includes ove ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, and many smaller islands within the British Isles. Northern Ireland shares a land border with the Republic of Ireland; otherwise, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel, the Celtic Sea and the Irish Sea. The total area of the United Kingdom is , with an estimated 2020 population of more than 67 million people. The United Kingdom has evolved from a series of annexations, unions and separations of constituent countries over several hundred years. The Treaty of Union between the Kingdom of England (which included Wales, annexed in 1542) and the Kingdom of Scotland in 170 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Publishers Weekly
''Publishers Weekly'' (''PW'') is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents. Published continuously since 1872, it has carried the tagline, "The International News Magazine of Book Publishing and Bookselling". With 51 issues a year, the emphasis today is on book reviews. The magazine was founded by bibliographer Bibliography (from and ), as a discipline, is traditionally the academic study of books as physical, cultural objects; in this sense, it is also known as bibliology (from ). English author and bibliographer John Carter describes ''bibliography ... Frederick Leypoldt in the late 1860s, and had various titles until Leypoldt settled on the name ''The Publishers' Weekly'' (with an apostrophe) in 1872. The publication was a compilation of information about newly published books, collected from publishers and from other sources by Leypoldt, for an audience of booksellers. By 1876, ''The Publishers' Weekly ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Puzzle
A puzzle is a game, Problem solving, problem, or toy that tests a person's ingenuity or knowledge. In a puzzle, the solver is expected to put pieces together (Disentanglement puzzle, or take them apart) in a logical way, in order to arrive at the correct or fun solution of the puzzle. There are different genres of puzzles, such as crossword puzzles, word-search puzzles, number puzzles, relational puzzles, and logic puzzles. The academic study of puzzles is called enigmatology. Puzzles are often created to be a form of entertainment but they can also arise from serious Mathematical problem, mathematical or logical problems. In such cases, their solution may be a significant contribution to mathematical research. Etymology The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' dates the word ''puzzle'' (as a verb) to the end of the 16th century. Its earliest use documented in the ''OED'' was in a book titled ''The Voyage of Robert Dudley (explorer), Robert Dudley...to the West Indies, 1594–95, narra ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Jesus Christ
Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious leader; he is the central figure of Christianity, the world's largest religion. Most Christians believe he is the incarnation of God the Son and the awaited Messiah (the Christ) prophesied in the Hebrew Bible. Virtually all modern scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed historically. Research into the historical Jesus has yielded some uncertainty on the historical reliability of the Gospels and on how closely the Jesus portrayed in the New Testament reflects the historical Jesus, as the only detailed records of Jesus' life are contained in the Gospels. Jesus was a Galilean Jew who was circumcised, was baptized by John the Baptist, began his own ministry and was often referred to as "rabbi". Jesus debated with fellow Jews on ho ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Crucified
Crucifixion is a method of capital punishment in which the victim is tied or nailed to a large wooden cross or beam and left to hang until eventual death from exhaustion and asphyxiation. It was used as a punishment by the Persians, Carthaginians and Romans, among others. Crucifixion has been used in parts of the world as recently as the twentieth century. The crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth is central to Christianity, and the cross (sometimes depicting Jesus nailed to it) is the main religious symbol for many Christian churches. Terminology Ancient Greek has two verbs for crucify: (), from (which in today's Greek only means "cross" but which in antiquity was used of any kind of wooden pole, pointed or blunt, bare or with attachments) and () "crucify on a plank", together with ( "impale"). In earlier pre-Roman Greek texts usually means "impale". The Greek used in the Christian New Testament uses four verbs, three of them based upon (), usually translated "cross". T ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and transitioned into the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery. The Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history: classical antiquity, the medieval period, and the modern period. The medieval period is itself subdivided into the Early, High, and Late Middle Ages. Population decline, counterurbanisation, the collapse of centralized authority, invasions, and mass migrations of tribes, which had begun in late antiquity, continued into the Early Middle Ages. The large-scale movements of the Migration Period, including various Germanic peoples, formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the 7th century, North Africa and the Middle East—most recently part of the Eastern Ro ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Orvieto
Orvieto () is a city and ''comune'' in the Province of Terni, southwestern Umbria, Italy, situated on the flat summit of a large butte of volcanic tuff. The city rises dramatically above the almost-vertical faces of tuff cliffs that are completed by defensive walls built of the same stone, called ''tufa''. History Etruscan era The ancient city (''urbs vetus'' in Latin, whence "Orvieto"), populated since Etruscan times, has usually been associated with Etruscan Velzna, but some modern scholars differ. Orvieto was certainly a major centre of Etruscan civilization; the archaeological museum (Museo Claudio Faina e Museo Civico) houses some of the Etruscan artifacts that have been recovered in the immediate area. A tomb in the Orvieto Cannicella necropolis bears the inscription ''mi aviles katacinas'', "I am of Avile Katacina"; the tomb's occupant thus bore an Etruscan-Latin first name, Aulus, and a family name that is believed to be of Celtic origin (derived from "Catacos"). Th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Catacombs
Catacombs are man-made subterranean passageways for religious practice. Any chamber used as a burial place is a catacomb, although the word is most commonly associated with the Roman Empire. Etymology and history The first place to be referred to as ''catacombs'' was the system of underground tombs between the 2nd and 3rd milestones of the Appian Way in Rome, where the bodies of the apostles Peter and Paul, among others, were said to have been buried. The name of that place in Late Latin was L.L. fem. nom. pl. n. ''catacumbas'' (sing. ''catacumba'') a word of obscure origin, possibly deriving from a proper name or a derivation of the Latin phrase ''catatumbas'', "among the tombs". The word referred originally only to the Roman catacombs, but was extended by 1836 to refer to any subterranean receptacle of the dead, as in the 18th-century Paris catacombs. The ancient Christians carved the first catacombs from soft tufa rock. (ref)" (World Book Encyclopedia, page 296) All Roman ca ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Tess Gerritsen
Tess Gerritsen (born Terry Tom; June 12, 1953) is the pseudonym of Terry Gerritsen, an American novelist and retired general physician. Early life Tess Gerritsen is the child of a Chinese immigrant and a Chinese-American seafood chef. While growing up in San Diego, California, Gerritsen often dreamt of writing her own Nancy Drew novels. Her first name is Terry; she decided to feminize it when she was a writer of romance novels.WRITERS AND SECRET IDENTITIES an essay by Tess Gerritsen posted to her blog Sunday, October 7, 2007 @ 11:45 Although she longed to be a writer, her family had reservations about the sustainability of a writing career, prompting Gerritsen to choose a career in medicine. In 1975, Gerritsen graduated from [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Thriller (genre)
Thriller is a genre of fiction, having numerous, often overlapping subgenres. Thrillers are characterized and defined by the mood (psychology), moods they elicit, giving viewers heightened feelings of suspense, Psychomotor agitation, excitement, Surprise (emotion), surprise, anticipation (emotion), anticipation and anxiety. Successful examples of thrillers are Alfred Hitchcock filmography, the films of Alfred Hitchcock. Thrillers generally keep the audience on the "edge of their seats" as the plot builds towards a climax (narrative), climax. The cover-up of important information is a common element. Literary devices such as red herrings, plot twists, unreliable narrators, and cliffhangers are used extensively. A thriller is often a villain-driven plot, whereby they present obstacles that the protagonist must overcome. The most common genres that overlap with the thriller genre include crime fiction, crime, horror fiction, horror and detective fiction. Characteristics Writer Vla ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |