An investment banker is sent by his firm to organize a collection of rare books for a mysterious client and realizes that there may be a medieval codex hidden among the volumes that parallels a computer game's addictive virtual reality world.

"Connie Willis draws upon her understanding of the universalities of human nature to explore the ageless issues of evil, suffering, and the indomitable will of the human spirit. For Kivrin, preparing to travel back in time to study one of the deadliest eras in humanity's history was as simple as receiving inoculations against the diseases of the fourteenth century and inventing an alibi for a woman traveling alone. For her instructors in the twenty-first...

"Peaches Alexander is thrilled to receive an unexpected invitation to a weekend party given by the handsome, eligible Duke of Kenneworth. The only problem: Stephen de Piaget, a stuffy medieval studies scholar who seems determined to get in the way. Peaches has absolutely no desire to get involved with Stephen, until a quirk of Fate sends her hurtling through time...Stephen de Piaget has been leading a double life: respectable professor by day, knight-in-training...

"For centuries, a hidden splinter sect of the Franciscans has guarded secrets that could transform the world. Now the safety of those secrets--and much more--depends on one man. Braverman 'Bravo' Shaw always knew his father had secrets. But not until Dexter Shaw dies mysteriously does Bravo discover the enormity of his father's life as a high-ranking member of the Order of Gnostic Observatines. For more than eight hundred years, the Order has preserved...

As Colette receives mysterious letters about an unconscious man in an English hospital, Ruth and Malcolm, whose young son is Colette's charge, try to overcome the disappearance of their daughter, while medievalist Patrick Mercer tries to reconstruct his life after a car crash.