Throughout history, secret societies have played a crucial role in shaping events that have created our world. Only an inner circle of power elite know the full extent of the influence of the conspiracy. It is Paris, 1772, and Sigismundo Celine knows he is destined to play an important part in this history-behind-history. The masons, the English nobil ity, the Jabobites, the Rosicrucians, the ruling clique of pre-Revolution France: these are but a few of the factions involved in the machinations and intrigue in which Sigismundo has become enmeshed. Thrown into the Bastille, shot at, assaulted by assassins, tortured, and brutally interrogated, he knows only what he is and what he must do to become the one spoken of in the old texts. But what he doesn't know could kill him: the secret powers of Maria, the Italian beauty who has become an English Lady; the Irish fisherman, Moon, who stumbles across the inner workings of an unsuspected cult; and the question they keep asking: the identity of The Widow's Son.

A dazzling speculative inquiry into the mysteries surrounding the sequel to THE DA VINCI CODE SECRETS OF THE WIDOW'S SON is itself an unprecedented book concept. Relying on extensive investigative reporting and intellectual sleuthing, it is an explorer's field guide to understanding the main themes, ideas, symbols and historical issues which author Dan Brown will most likely utilise in THE SOLOMON KEY - months before this much-awaited sequel to THE DA VINCI CODE is even published. SECRETS OF THE CODE told the story of how the riddle embedded in The Da Vinci Code's dust-cover pointed to Dan Brown's next book: selected letters appearing on the book jacket's flaps, slightly bolder than others, spelled out the mystically alluring question, 'Is There No Help for the Widow's Son?' Research led David Shugarts and his team to understand the role of the 'Widow's Son' in the history of Freemasonry, biblical apocrypha, Mormonism, and various secret societies and occult belief systems. Dan Brown has since confirmed that his next book is indeed about the Masons, and that protagonist Robert Langdon, of DA VINCI CODE and ANGELS AND DEMONS fame, would be back to lead us on a symbolic treasure hunt through the art, architecture and secret codes of the American capital, Washington DC. This book is not a plot spoiler for THE SOLOMON KEY. It is not trying to guess who will be murdered, or which fictional mysteries, cover-ups, and conspiracies will be invented to drive the plot of this story. SECRETS OF THE WIDOW'S SON is about the ideas and issues that will form the background and context for THE SOLOMON KEY.

Pass the bottle and I'll tell you a story of whiskey and wheelguns; of when mighty Buffalo Soldiers patrolled the desert on iron steeds, and of cannibal lizard men deep in the Louisiana bayou; of Navajo skin-walkers and the Mexican undead; of the forgotten tomb of an ancient Mayan god and the Man with Bronze Teeth. A story of the lawman Zarahemla Two Crows and the young widow who together stormed the gates of Hell to rescue her son. A story, my friend, of when the west was weird.

Upon the moment 12-year-old Jeremy Rosenberg witnesses his father's death, Jeremy loses the world he had assumed would last forever. The Widow's Son is launched on a devastating moment, but this tale of misguided efforts and accidental triumphs of children forced into difficult times creates a humorous, poignant novel. The reader's laughter and tears are sure to flow together to the last page as Jeremy struggles to make his family into a family once again.

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A story with two endings tells how a hard-working widow loses the son she cherishes.

Three months before the invasion of Iraq, a member of a Masonic fraternity known as the Rosicrucians escapes from a British Intelligence holding station. Orchestrated by the head of the Russian Federal Security Service, this event is somehow linked to a the highly classified CIA file only known as Gladio B. Tasked to destroy an unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics, the chairman of the British Joint Intelligence Committee plans to bring the criminals to justice. But he is running low on both time and allies, as mass annihilation threatens the whole planet. Who are the mysterious eight families that seem to be behind the mysterious events, and what do they have to do with the ancient 33rd degree level of understanding, only known by the mysterious Rosicrucian brotherhood?