"Angels and Demons" by Dan Brown. Pocket Books, 2000.
The theft of a secret and highly dangerous sample of antimatter from a research center in Switzerland leads to a race against the clock, literally. The Illuminati, a secret society long presumed to be defunct, claims responsibility and leads researchers and experts to Vatican City where, against the backdrop of a papal election, three cardinals are kidnapped from the conclave and murdered. Will the experts solve the clues and recover the antimatter before Vatican City is destroyed?

BibliOdyssey
Although this blog is intended to be a log of books I have read, I came across the web site BibliOdyssey via another blog and thought it was worth sharing here: it is a collection of art from old books - quirky, beautiful, mysterious, eclectic.

"The Shadow of the Wind," by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Penguin Press, 2004.
This novel is set in Barcelona during and after the Spanish civil war. On his 10th birthday, Daniel's father takes him to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, where "last copies" go for safekeeping forever, or until they can be adopted by someone else. Daniel selects the book, "Shadow of the Wind," which captures his imagination so completely that he wants to find out more about the author and read his other works. During the course of his search over the next 10 years or so, he finds it unusual that there seems to be no information about the author, and that someone is methodically tracking down every copy of the author's works and burning them. There is danger, romance, humor, drama, and philosophy in the pages of this novel, and the author is successful in preserving the punchline until near the end of the story.