A TALE OF ALCHEMY, PHILOSOPHY AND MURDER:
HISTORICAL FICTION FROM TOBY PRESS

Claudia Gross' Scholarium to be Released in June 2004

"This book will keep you from falling asleep at night. Guaranteed. An impressive summer read." - BILD

"Each and every character is convincing...Murder and philosophical controversy are intertwined in a dense web which keeps the reader entranced." - Nordbayerischer Kurier

"In this city everyone had a secret."

The year is 1413. It is an overcast, rainy night in the city of Cologne, Germany. A neighborhood is wrenched suddenly from its sleep by piercing screams. As residents rush out to the street, they catch only the merest glimpse of a figure in a billowing cloak hastening from the scene. The master cloth-maker is about to set off in hot pursuit when he finds on the ground a book, a pair of sleeves, shoes, a shirt and hose; and the body of Frederico Casall, a Master of the Seven Liberal Arts and an impassioned champion of the teachings of Thomas Aquinas.

The Chancellor of the newly-founded university charges Konrad Steiner, another of the Masters in the Arts faculty, with the investigation of the crime. Who is behind it? Is the murderer a member of the faculty, an opponent of the philosophical tendency represented by Casall? Or is there any basis for the rumor that Casall's young and well-read wife, Sophie, might have had good reason to rid herself of him? Steiner finds himself confronted with a riddle that is more than philosophical when, shortly afterwards, Sophie vanishes without a trace...

SCHOLARIUM (Toby Press, June 2004, $19.95) brings the world of medieval scholarship vividly to life. The intricate detail with which it traces the controversial philosophical debates of the time is fascinating, while the characters and their personal concerns-with learning, heresy, desire and betrayal-engage us from the first.

Translated by Helen Atkins from the original German.

CLAUDIA GROSS was born in 1956 in Arolsen in Hesse, Germany. She studied medieval philosophy and German. She now lives and works in Kempen on the Lower Rhine.