The Eight is the story of the Quest for a fabulous, gold-and-silver, bejeweled chess set that once belonged to Charlemagne and has been buried for a thousand years.
At the dawn of the French Revolution, when soldiers are looting the abbeys and monasteries, the set is dug up from an abbey in the Pyrenees and scattered around the world. This begins a 200-year-long chase across the globe – from the 1790s of the Revolution to the 1970s of the OPEC embargo — with 64 characters, (32 historic and 32 modern) all seeking the pieces in a giant chess game of cosmic proportions.
The Eight has been translated into more than forty languages; received numerous awards; and continues to be recognized on Top 100 Lists, including National Public Radio’s “100 Best Killer Thrillers,” Amazon Book’s “100 Mysteries & Thrillers to Read in a Lifetime,” and International Thriller Writers “Thrillers: 100 Must-Reads.” In a national poll by the Spanish journal El País, The Eight was voted one of the top ten books of all time.
