Backward from the Cloister: An 1840s Monastery Adventure

About this book:

Brother Thomas has spent ten years copying manuscripts in the silent cloisters of Saint Jude's Abbey. Tonight, he runs barefoot through the freezing Spessart forest, a stolen cipher clutched against his chest and the abbey's bloodhounds baying at his heels. The text he carries isn't scripture—it's a secret that could topple bishops, and Abbot Anselm will burn the forest down before he lets it escape.

What begins as a desperate flight across bogs and moors becomes a lethal game of wits between a scholar who knows every hunting treatise in the library and the ruthless enforcers who know every trail in the woods. As Thomas deciphers the manuscript's true nature, each chapter peels back another layer of the abbey's polished facade, revealing a centuries-old conspiracy guarded by men who wear God's robes but serve only power.

Atmospheric, intelligent, and relentlessly paced, *Backward from the Cloister* plunges you into a 1840s Bavaria where faith is a weapon, knowledge is treason, and the only way out of the darkness is straight through it. For readers who crave historical thrillers with the grit of *The Name of the Rose* and the pulse-pounding pursuit of *The Fugitive*.