Symbologist Robert Langdon, summoned to Washington, D.C. by his mentor, finds himself plunged into a clandestine world of Masonic secrets, hidden history, and secret locations--all of which seem to be dragging him toward a single, inconceivable truth.

Revealing the secret history of punctuation, this tour of two thousand years of the written word, from ancient Greece to the Internet, explores the parallel histories of language and typography throughout the world and across time.

"A broken promise reveals a terrifying legacy in this electrifying novel from the New York Times bestselling author of When All the Girls Have Gone. A painter of fiery, nightmarish visions throws herself into the sea--but she'll leave some of her secrets behind ... Seattle gallery owner Virginia Troy has spent years battling the demons that stem from her childhood time in a cult and the night a fire burned through the compound, killing her mother....

"Archaeologist Genevieve von Petzinger looks past the horses, bison, ibex, and faceless humans in the ancient paintings and instead focuses on the abstract geometric images that accompany them. She offers her research on the terse symbols that appear more often than any other kinds of figures-- signs that have never really been studied or explained until now"--