The Devil’s Snares
A strong woman. A powerful man. Linked by a seemingly unsolvable puzzle.
Pirna, 1541. The number of mysterious deaths are multiplying, almost as if the Devil himself has a hand in them. Nineteen-year-old Sophia has just returned to her hometown, grown up into a young woman with a serious interest in medicine, which dates back to her mother and brother’s plague-related deaths during her childhood. While looking around her father’s office, she discovers a peculiar book - and she hopes to find within its pages a cure for the Black Death. However, somebody else knows about the existence of this book, which promises prodigious knowledge: the town clerk, Wolf Schumann. He is obsessed with the idea of procuring this volume for himself, and is not adverse to murder as a means to his ends.
- A historical novel, a tense mystery, a dramatic romance
- The kick-off to a trilogy about a mysterious book that holds knowledge and power
Background information to the book: Even yet today, scholars are baffled by the Voynich Manuscript, which remains undecipherable. It was presumably written in a rare northern Italian dialect, and the illustrations indicate that the text contains botanical, anatomical and astronomical information.
Heike Stöhr
Heike Stöhr, born in Pirna in 1964, earned degrees in German Literature and History, and works as a teacher in Berlin. She did the research for her thesis on Saxon history in the Pirna Municipal Archive, focusing on the subject matter she has utilized in her novels.
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