I am delighted to be a stop on the #blogtour for Sign of the Cross today and thrilled that I have the honour of sharing a piece of writing by the author of this fantastic book; Glenn Cooper.
Synopsis
Abruzzo, Italy: a young priest suffers the stigmata of the crucifixion.
The Vatican, Rome: the Pope calls on Harvard professor Cal Donovan to investigate the truth of the priest’s claim.
Berlin, Germany: a neo-Nazi organisation believes the priest is the key to an earth-shattering secret. A secret that can be used as a deadly weapon.
When the priest is abducted, a perilous race against the clock begins. Only Cal can track down the ruthless organisation and stop it, before an apocalyptic catastrophe is unleashed.
A Life in Libraries
Glenn Cooper
Anyone who knows me well, knows that libraries are important in my life. My first exposure occurred when I was very young and my mother dragged me to a library where she was doing her dissertation work. I was given a book to occupy myself at a long wooden table in the reading room and taken into the stacks whenever she needed to find something. To me the stacks were mysterious, intriguing labyrinths that filled my nostrils with the mustiness that the best libraries emit. In college, my favorite place on the Harvard campus was the Widener Library, one of the largest in America, where the shelves seemed as endless as the infinite library Jorge Luis Borges conceived in The Library of Babel. Wandering through libraries and archives is my idea of heaven. To me, they are secular cathedrals celebrating the best of mankind—the drive to create and traffic in ideas.
When I became a novelist, my obsession with libraries bled into my books. It was Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose(where a library was central to the plot) that taught me that itwas possible to write a book that was esoteric, even quite academic, but also a page-turning thriller capable of capturing a large audience. With that as inspiration, I wrote my first thriller, Library of the Dead, where a vast, ancient library is the engine of the mystery, and two million copies sold in thirty translations later, my career was launched. Libraries continue to play leading roles in my books. In my current series, beginning with Sign of the Cross, Harvard professor of religion, Cal Donovan, is granted unique browsing rights to the Vatican Secret Archives and the Vatican Apostolic Library, a device that filled my head with plot ideas.
So, when it comes to my own library, I have always been particular. I own about five thousand books and still have every one I ever bought or inherited. Once in, never out. I like to arrange them by chapters of my life. I got my university degree in archaeology, so there are my anthropology and archaeology shelves. I studied and practiced medicine, so there are shelves on medicine, chemistry, biology. I attended film school, so there are books on film production and screenplays. For each novel I’ve written I’ve added sometimes hundreds of research books to my collection. I’m interested in history and literature and have a small collection of signed, first editions of my favorite authors. And of course, there are my own books.
Sign of the Cross triggered a buying spree on the esoteric topic of stigmatics—clergy members or lay people who develop bleeding manifestations of the wounds of Christ. In the book, Cal Donovan is asked by the Pope to do an informal, off-the-books investigation of a young stigmatic Italian priest who was rapidly developing a cult of followers. Was he a faker? Was he a true stigmatic? Why were powerful, shadowy figures willing to kill to uncover the origins of the priest’s stigmata? Now I own about three dozen books on stigmatics that I have organizedaround a small plaster bust of the most famous modern stigmatic, the Italian monk, Padre Pio.
When we decided to flee New England winters for Sarasota, Florida, I had a problem. I had a wonderful library in Massachusetts, but when we went hunting for a place to live, most houses were not only devoid of libraries, they were depressingly devoid of books! The house we settled upon had some built-in bookcases but they would not suffice.
Enter my son, a spacial genius, who mapped out a solution of turning the vaulted great room into a two-storey library with a gallery on one end and a library/writer’s loft on the other. Of course, we needed to create a hidden staircase and moveable bookcase to access the gallery that even Sherlock Holmes couldn’t find because, why not?
At night, I like to browse my library. With the simple act of letting my eye settle on this shelf, then that, I can wander through my past and think about things happy and sad, small and profound, the myriad words, sentences, paragraphs and chapters that comprise a life.
About the author
Glenn Cooper chairs a media company, Lascaux Media, which produced three independent feature-length films. His debut novel, The Library of the Dead, became an international bestseller and was translated into thirty languages. All his seven published books have become top-ten international best-sellers.
http://www.glenncooperbooks.com
@GlennCooper #SignOfTheCross
@blackthornbks
For me, the picture of Glenn’s library together with his sumptuous description is a total adjective hole: amazing; wondrous; idyllic, the list goes on! What a fabulous space to reflect in, I’m unbelievably envious!
Sign of the Cross is published TODAY in paperback (4th July) in paperback and you can buy it here
My thanks go to Holly Domney and Black Thorn Books for the invitation to the #blogtour and for my copy of the book.
If you enjoyed my post, please do check out my others and also the other stops on the #blogtour (see below).
Until next time!
@mrscookesbooks
Mrs Cooke’s Books 