Tom Sullivan is about to graduate from Princeton. He's intelligent and popular; but haunted by the violent death several years earlier of his father; an academic who devoted his life to studying one of the rarest; most complex and most valuable books in the world. Since its publication in 1499; The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili has baffled scholars who have tried to understand its many mysteries. Coded in seven languages; the text is at once a passionate love story; an intricate mathematical labyrinth; and a tale of arcane brutality. Paul Harris; Tom's room-mate; has deeply personal reasons of his own for wanting to unveil the secrets the book hides. When a long-lost diary surfaces; it seems the two friends have found the key to the labyrinth - but when a fellow researcher is murdered only hours later; they suddenly find themselves in great danger. And what they discover embedded in the text stuns them: a narrative detailing the passion of a Renaissance prince; a hidden crypt; and a secret worth dying to protect.