Alchemy

Jade Green is a solicitor with her own practice, Lost Causes, that she runs from her London flat. One day, the phone rings, and her life changes. Dr. Gilbert has been dismissed from his post teaching the history of science at the University of Wessex. Allegations have been made that he was corrupting the students with satanism; the professor himself suspects the university to be controlled by a fundamentalist Christian sect.As Jade delves into this bizarre case, she finds herself drawn into a seventeenth-century manuscript, the Memorial of Amyntas Boston, a girl - raised as a boy - who is awaiting trial for dabbling in the black arts and in alchemy.The two stories intertwine as Jade feels her life mysteriously resonate with Amyntas's; her hidden identities and her secret love. In this sweeping novel, Maureen Duffy combines the pleasures of detection with the mysteries of fraud, alchemy, early science and witchcraft.