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Synopsis

Jonathon Payne and David Jones are back in the fray in this page-turning, blockbusting new instalment from Chris Kuzneski, bestselling author of Sword of God, Sign of the Cross and The Lost Throne.

When the prophetic writings of sixteenth-century apothecary Nostradamus begin to ring alarmingly true, Payne and Jones find themselves in a life-or-death race across the world to stop those who would use the French seer's predictions for their own dark purposes.

With the breathless pace that's found Chris Kuzneski hundreds of thousands of fans, The Prophecy is the autumn's must-have adventure thriller.

» Read the first chapters of The Prophecy by downloading the Penguin Taster here

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Once you reach a certain age, it becomes increasingly difficult to remember specific things about your childhood. For instance, I can’t remember when I first read a book by Dr. Seuss, listened to a tune by the Beatles, or learned the true identity of Santa Claus. Still, despite my advancing age and declining memory, I know exactly what I was doing when I discovered Nostradamus.

Amazingly, the man who introduced me to the sixteenth-century prophet wasn’t my father or a teacher. It was Orson Welles, the plump, white-bearded actor who, in his later years, actually resembled Santa Claus. That is, if Santa dressed in black, smoked cigars that were larger than an elf, and had a whiskey glass attached to his hand. Because that’s how Welles appeared on film as the narrator in the 1981 documentary The Man Who Saw Tomorrow. The award-winning thespian, best known for his work on Citizen Kane and his infamous radio broadcast of War of the Worlds, is the only reason I didn’t change the channel when I turned on the television that Saturday afternoon. Even though Welles slurred half of his words because of one of those aforementioned cigars, his presence added credibility to a film that a kid like me normally would have skipped for a cartoon. Instead, I sat glued to my couch for two hours, fascinated by all the “facts” that I learned about the legendary Nostradamus and frightened by many of his dire predictions.

In case you didn’t notice, I put the word facts in quotation marks because very little is actually known about Nostradamus. He published his best-known book Les Propheties in 1555, a turbulent time in France when seers and occultists were persecuted by the Inquisition. Their witch-hunt forced him to write everything in code, often using a mixture of word games and languages in order to obscure his prophecies. To protect himself further, he rarely revealed personal information about himself. In fact, the names of his first wife and two children—all of whom were killed by the Bubonic plague—are still unknown to this day. In addition, many of his journals and papers mysteriously disappeared from his office at the time of his death, a date that he supposedly foresaw and prepared for.

In my latest thriller, The Prophecy, I reveal what happened to Nostradamus’s most valuable documents and imagine what a modern-day criminal would be willing to do to obtain them. Standing in his way are Jonathon Payne and David Jones, two ex-soldiers who are dragged into the conflict by a mysterious woman. They quickly find themselves the target of a ruthless killer who will stop at nothing to learn the seer’s final prophecy. In an adventure that spans several centuries and countries, the Americans are forced to fight for their lives while trying to decode Nostradamus’s final puzzle.

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