Secrets Of The Stone Of Destiny

Morgan Izaak learns that there is an Irish Stone of Destiny in his own town and sets out to find it in order to save his dying mother, but he and his friend, Eny, must battle mysterious creatures who are also looking for the object.

A series of grisly deaths are linked to the sacred Stone of Scone in this compelling medieval mystery featuring friar-sleuth Brother Athelstan. "This abbey is a strange place, Brother Athelstan. A hall of ghosts, a place of flitting shadows. The dead throng here. I can hear them whispering as they ride the air." During the harsh winter of 1381 murder stalks the streets of London in all its grisly forms. The city's prostitutes are falling prey to a silent, deadly assassin known as The Flayer who carefully peels his victims' skins for his collection. At the same time, Westminster Abbey, which houses the sacred Stone of Scone, is plagued by a series of hideous poisonings. Could there be a connection between these brutally violent deaths and the stone, which the English crown cherishes as a symbol of its rule over Scotland? Then there are the two former Upright Men, leaders of the Great Revolt, who are found mysteriously hanged in the Piebald Tavern, close to Brother Athelstan's parish church of St Erconwald - and Athelstan is faced with his most baffling investigation to date. Can he navigate this deadly maze of murder and intrigue and pull the various threads together?

Stone brings his unique blend of Bible knowledge, prophecy, and spiritual insight to the topic in this comprehensive look at the afterlife. He show what hell will be like for those who depart this life without a salvation experience, and discusses the location and purpose of Paradise, the temporary home for Christians who have died.

In this riveting follow-up to The Grail Conspiracy, famed journalist Cotten Stone is at the top of her craft until one of her discoveries is proven to be a hoax. Without a steady job, credibility, or a shred of self-respect, the struggling reporter fades from the limelight. A year later at a famous Inca site, she unearths a crystal tablet that predicts the Great Flood and another final "cleansing"—yet to take place—to be led by the daughter of an angel. According to the Venatori—an ancient society of spiritual warriors—a series of these sacred tablets exist...and the last one holds the key to surviving Armegeddon. Racing to recover this last secret before the Fallen Ones, Cotten comes face to face with her terrifying destiny, a legacy to battle the Son of the Dawn until the End of Days. Praise: "Fascinating and breathless, The Last Secret by Lynn Sholes and Joe Moore will leave you glued to your chair. From Texas to Peru and Italy, the story sweeps across centuries in a quest for the secret key to surviving Armageddon. Sholes and Moore are true story-tellers, with unerring eyes and the souls of artists. You'll love this one!"—Gayle Lynds, New York Times Bestselling author of The Last Spymaster "Demonic possession, strange suicides, and Biblical prophecy collide in Sholes and Moore's The Last Secret, an intelligent religious thriller with bite. Once again, Cotten Stone proves herself to be a heroine for the new millennium. Insightful, engrossing . . . but more importantly, a suspenseful thriller from first page to last!"—James Rollins, New York Times bestseller of Black Order "Hold on tight to The Last Secret—and enjoy the ride!"—Nelson Erlick, author of The Xeno Solution and GermLine

A Scottish national hero tells the story of a daring exploit that rocked Great Britain—and the love of country that inspired it. Ian Robertson Hamilton was an unknown law student at Glasgow University—until Christmas Eve 1950. On that night, assisted by Alan Stuart, Gavin Vernon, and Kay Matheson, he took the Stone of Destiny from beneath the Coronation Chair in Westminster Abbey. The stone, once used in the coronation of Scottish monarchs, had been taken nearly seven centuries earlier by Edward I, and its recovery was a major symbolic victory, making Hamilton a Scottish national hero. In England, however, the act had the opposite effect, and a manhunt for the “vulgar vandals” was launched to satisfy the outrage of the English establishment and bring the perpetrators to justice. In the end, the Stone was given up, but the gang was not charged. This solitary act set Hamilton on a path for the rest of his life—from which he has not diverged. Decades after that fateful night, the story still holds people spellbound when Hamilton recounts it. In this book, Ian Hamilton sets down the chain of events that led to his decision to go to London and remove the Stone and provides a minute-by-minute account of the act and the aftermath. The basis of a major Hollywood film starring Robert Carlyle and Billy Boyd, The Stone of Destiny is not simply a retelling of a stunt that made nationwide news. It is a book about how a nation’s conscience was stirred by a symbolic act that changed the lives of many.

Throughout the four hundred thousand years that humanity has been collecting fossils, sea urchin fossils, or echinoids, have continually been among the most prized, from the Paleolithic era, when they decorated flint axes, to today, when paleobiologists study them for clues to the earth’s history. In The Star-Crossed Stone, Kenneth J. McNamara, an expert on fossil echinoids, takes readers on an incredible fossil hunt, with stops in history, paleontology, folklore, mythology, art, religion, and much more. Beginning with prehistoric times, when urchin fossils were used as jewelry, McNamara reveals how the fossil crept into the religious and cultural lives of societies around the world—the roots of the familiar five-pointed star, for example, can be traced to the pattern found on urchins. But McNamara’s vision is even broader than that: using our knowledge of early habits of fossil collecting, he explores the evolution of the human mind itself, drawing striking conclusions about humanity’s earliest appreciation of beauty and the first stirrings of artistic expression. Along the way, the fossil becomes a nexus through which we meet brilliant eccentrics and visionary archaeologists and develop new insights into topics as seemingly disparate as hieroglyphics, Beowulf, and even church organs. An idiosyncratic celebration of science, nature, and human ingenuity, The Star-Crossed Stone is as charming and unforgettable as the fossil at its heart.

Within the world there are certain objects, talismans if you like, that seem to possess a curious almost magical power. Like Aladdin's lamp, ownership of such objects has always been the desire of powerful men. However, what they have often not realised is that this desire is not their own; rather it is the object, or should one say the unseen forces working through it, that causes the desire. Ownership then becomes a matter of destiny and changes in ownership can signify even apocalyptic events. One such object is the Spear of Destiny, supposedly the weapon which pierced the side of Christ. The possession of this talisman is said to have empowered Charlemagne to found the Holy Roman Empire. Adolf Hitler's possession of the spear is said to have triggered the start of his own megalomania: to build his Third Reich. This book concerns another talisman, perhaps the oldest and greatest of them all: the Lia Fail or Stone of Destiny. To look at it is not all that prepossessing: just a rather worn block of stone with iron handles protruding from its sides. Yet the mythology surrounding it is extraordinary. It predates even the Ark of the Covenant by hundreds if not thousands of years, for according to the legends, it is the self-same stone that was used by the patriarch Jacob (Israel) as both a pillow and an altar. In this timely work, Adrian Gilbert investigates the whole story of the Stone of Destiny, examining both the legends and the known history of this talismanic object. He explores the ancient history of the Near East showing how, when and why the stone could indeed have been brought to Ireland and how this understanding fits in with certain of the Edgar Cayce readings. He also looks at the stone in a way never before attempted and shows how its very dimensions provide hidden evidence that links it both to the pyramids of Egypt and to the Druidic religion of Britain, which some commentators believe was also imported from Egypt. Finally he suggests that while its recent removal from Westminster appears on the surface to have been nothing more than a political stunt, it was actually engineered from higher dimensions. For this stone truly is a talisman whose fate, like that of the Ark of the Covenant, is emblematic of the unfolding of prophetic history.

A compelling and richly textured journey to Burma into the heart of Imperial Green Jade, the rare and stunning stone more precious than diamonds, interconnects the modern story of the miners of jadeite who are dying of AIDS because they are being paid in the form of heroin with the mythology and secret history of this unusual jewel that goes back to the Burmese court. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.

*NOW A NETFLIX LIMITED SERIES—from producer and director Shawn Levy (Stranger Things) starring Mark Ruffalo, Hugh Laurie, and newcomer Aria Mia Loberti* Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, the beloved instant New York Times bestseller and New York Times Book Review Top 10 Book about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris, and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel. In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the Resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge. Doerr’s “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, he illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill” (Los Angeles Times).