The Secret Dead

by S. J. Parris Book 1 in the Giordano Bruno Novels series.

First published 2014

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Naples, 1566. Eighteen-year-old Giordano Bruno is still a novice in the Dominican order when he witnesses an illicit examination of a young woman’s body. What begins as an attempt to understand the cause of death leaves him convinced that she was murdered.

Bruno’s search for an explanation draws him beyond the safety of the monastery and into the interests of men who expect the dead to remain silent. His first investigation forces him to choose between obedience, intellectual curiosity and justice in a city where religious authority closely controls forbidden knowledge.