Vatican Mystery Fiction

Detective Gabriel Allon returns in Daniel Silva's stunning thriller of ancient and modern betrayal, long-buried secrets and unthinkable deeds that takes the listener from Munich to Venice to the Vatican.

Amid the grandeur of the Vatican, the bones of Saint Peter—the Church’s most sacred relics—hold secrets that could reshape its history. Father Michael Dominic, Prefect of the Vatican Secret Archives, uncovers a mysterious, nearly forgotten inscription linking Linus, Saint Peter’s first successor, to foundational decisions that shaped the early Church. What begins as a scholarly exploration of Linus’s legacy quickly turns into an urgent quest to protect the truth.

Fatima, Portugal, 1917: The Virgin Mary appears to three peasant children, sharing with them three secrets, two of which are soon revealed to the world. The third secret is sealed away in the Vatican, read only by popes, and not disclosed until the year 2000. When revealed, its quizzical tone and anticlimactic nature leave many faithful wondering if the church has truly unveiled all of the Virgin Mary's words or if a message far more important has been left in the shadows.

This captivating narrative follows Father Michael Dominic, the esteemed Prefect of the Vatican’s Secret Archives, as he uncovers a remarkable artifact lost to time—Leonardo da Vinci’s most ingenious invention, the Celestial Guardian. Initially heralded as a divine instrument capable of forecasting a catastrophic asteroid bound for Earth, Father Dominic's discovery soon unravels a more ominous reality: the Guardian’s ability to not just predict, but alter celestial events.

When a church combusts in rural Appalachia, the bizarre trail of carnage suggests diabolical forces are at work. Charged with explaining the inexplicable, the FBI's Dr. Ailes and Agent Knoll once again turn to the ace up their sleeve: Agent Jessica Blackwood, a former prodigy from a family dynasty of illusionists. After playing a pivotal role in the capture of the Warlock, a seemingly supernatural serial killer, Jessica can no longer ignore the world - and the skills - she left behind.

In Munich, writer Benjamin Stern enters his flat to find a man leafing through his research. When Stern confronts him, the man shoots him, murmurs a few words in Latin, gathers the papers and leaves. In Venice, art restorer and Israeli agent Gabriel Allon reads a message saying that Stern is dead; can he leave immediately? At the Vatican, a priest named Pietro paces in the garden, pondering the discoveries he has made, the enemies he will make, and the journey he must undertake. Silva weaves these three threads into a multilayered mystery.

When the papal apartments are burgled in 1901, Sherlock Holmes is summoned to Rome by Pope Leo XII. After learning from the pontiff that several priceless cameos that could prove compromising to the church, and perhaps determine the future of the newly unified Italy, have been stolen, Holmes is asked to recover them. In a parallel story, Michelangelo, the toast of Rome in 1501 after the unveiling of his Pieta, is commissioned by Pope Alexander VI, the last of the Borgia pontiffs, with creating the cameos that will bedevil Holmes and the papacy four centuries later.

It is an ordinary day in Marco Venetti’s quiet coastal parish - but the woman who’s come to confess is not ordinary. Marco has always been drawn to beautiful Elena, and she brings news that will shatter his peace. Elena’s sister and daughter have been kidnapped, to force her to bring a gang of ruthless men into the country - if she doesn’t, her family will be brutally killed. But if she obeys, many more innocents will die.... In her desperation she turns to Marco, knowing his time in the military has given him the skills she needs.

In her long career as America's most beloved suspense writer, Mary Higgins Clark's The Lost Years is her most astonishing and dramatic work to date. At its center is a discovery that, if authenticated, may be the most revered document in human history - the holiest of the holy - and certainly the most coveted and valuable object in the world.

September 1943: German forces occupy Rome. SS officer Paul Hauptmann rules with terror. The war's outcome is far from certain. An Irish priest, Hugh O'Flaherty, dedicates himself to helping those escaping from the Nazis. His home is Vatican City, the world's smallest state, a neutral, independent country within Rome where the occupiers hold no sway. Here Hugh brings together an unlikely band of friends to hide the vulnerable under the noses of the enemy. But Hauptmann's net begins closing in on the Escape Line and the need for a terrifyingly audacious mission grows critical.

While traveling across the United States during the Papal Symposium, the papal plane, Shepherd One, is commandeered by a terrorist cell calling itself the Muslim Revolutionary Front. On board: a nuclear payload with half the yield that destroyed Hiroshima. Their demand to the US government: assassinate the five leading principals of Mossad.

In Virginia, a Blacksite facility is assaulted with military sophistication to free a homegrown terrorist who once attempted to assassinate FBI Specialist Shari Cohen. Within days, two of America’s most iconic symbols of freedom are razed. In Rome, Kimball Hayden’s demons are at their worst, the man becoming a shell of his former self. But when he learns that Shari Cohen’s assassin is on the loose, he embarks on a trip of rediscovery that unites him with the woman he loves.

In an abandoned church deep inside the Syrian Desert, Father Jenkins watches over a group of children who'd been orphaned by war and unrest. Having been marked for extraction by the Vatican Knights, a cabal of ruthless killers from the Islamic State cripples all attempts of safe passage and gives chase across a desert landscape that's completely ruled by scorpions and snakes.

In the days following the Pope's death, a cardinal is found brutally murdered in a chapel in Rome, his eyes gouged and his hands cut off. Called in for the grisly case, police inspector Paola Dicanti learns that another cardinal was recently found dead; he had also been tortured.

Fact: In the 1980s, a Vatican archbishop and rogue group of Freemasons were implicated in the murder of Pope John Paul I. A decade later, that same cleric illicitly acquired an ancient Templar scroll directly undermining fundamental Church teachings. Today, historians Cameron Thorne and Amanda Spencer-Gunn stumble upon a sword engraved with a map leading to this hidden scroll. A pope was murdered the first time to keep the scroll a secret. Can Cam and Amanda escape a similar fate?

While vacationing in Paris, Shari Cohen's children are kidnapped by Jadran Božanović, a Croatian kingpin who runs a human-trafficking cartel and is as deadly as the knife he wields. Few dare to challenge him. And even fewer dare to defy him. With time running out and her resources running thin, Shari calls upon the aid of Kimball Hayden and his team Vatican Knights - an elite group of commandos dedicated to protect the sovereignty, interests, and citizenry of the Church - and are once again reunited.

Thirty years ago, the world was in the exploratory stages of creating a technology capable of artificial intelligence. Thirty years later, that technology has been perfected. In a lab somewhere in a remote mountain region in Iran, nanoparticles, or micro-bots, have been created to be self-sustaining and self-reproducing, each day evolving and learning from experience. They have been programmed to be the ultimate predator, devouring everything in their path and leaving nothing behind.

Kimball Hayden is the commander of an elite commando group known as the Vatican Knights, a black-op force that works for the Church to protect its sovereignty, its interests, and the welfare of its citizenry. But Kimball is being stalked by someone from the past, a soldier who is stronger, faster, and far more brutal - an assassin so deadly not even the Vatican Knights can stop him.

Long before Kimball Hayden became a Vatican Knight, he once served as an elite assassin for the US government. After the ordered assassination on a United States senator by a cabal within the US command, Kimball is set up for failure and is believed dead by the Pentagon brass. But when a leading political principal involved with the senator's murder discovers that Hayden is alive, he's immediately seen as a threat to a certain few on Capitol Hill regarding the sanctioned hit on the senator, and those involved.

Before Kimball Hayden became a Vatican Knight, he was the commander of the Pieces of Eight, a kill squad that worked as part of a black-arm force of the CIA. He kills with impunity and acts with the cold fortitude of a machine. But when he begins to question the morality of his actions and the motives of his superiors, he is placed within the crosshairs by high-end principals who want to see him dead.