Invited to speak at the Athenaeum in Philadelphia, the renowned British scholar Dame Frances Yates intends to explore the shared spiritual ideals of the Hermetic and Quaker traditions. But along the way, while savoring the attractions of historic Philadelphia, she encounters murder and uncovers a ring of thieves stealing books and treasures from libraries and houses of worship throughout the city.
Marjorie G. Jones, the author of In the Meeting and other books in the Frances Yates mystery series, published the definitive biography of Yates, a British historian, scholar, and leading expert on the Renaissance, in 2008. Yates had gained fame through her study of the Hermetic tradition and the life of Giordano Bruno, a Catholic priest who was burned at the stake for his heretical beliefs by Inquisition authorities in 1600 (you may have seen Bruno profiled on Neil deGrasse Tyson's reboot of the TV series Cosmos). Yates' book Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, published in 1964, is the seminal work on the topic. In the Frances Yates mystery series, Jones brings Yates back to life in the current era as a fictional sleuth-scholar with a yen for travel.
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