The Thousand

Kevin Guilfoile's riveting follow-up to Cast of Shadows ("spellbinding"--Chicago Tribune; "a masterpiece of intelligent plotting"--Salon) centers on an extraordinary young woman's race to find her father's killer and to free herself from the cross fire of a centuries-old civil war in which she has unknowingly become ensnared.
In 530 B.C., a mysterious ship appeared off the rainy shores of Croton, in what is now Italy. After three days the skies finally cleared and a man disembarked to address the curious and frightened crowd that had gathered along the wet sands. He called himself Pythagoras. Exactly what he said that day is unknown, but a thousand men and women abandoned their lives and families to follow him. They became a community. A school. A cult dedicated to the search for a mathematical theory of everything. Although Pythagoras would die years later, following a bloody purge, his disciples would influence Western philosophy, science, and...