It is 1919 and the Great War has come to a close. But in the shadows of the world's major cities, the killing has just begun. In this perilous time, as the division between order and chaos grows increasingly slim, a select group of visionaries have taken it upon themselves to ensure the safety of humanity. They are known as the Arcanum.<br><br>In London's stormy Hyde Park, Konstantin Duvall, the Arcanum's founder, has been killed in a suspicious accident. Dismayed, the group's longest-lived member, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, determines to avenge Duvall's death—and uncover the secret left in his wake. For the dead man possessed the world's most powerful—now missing—artifact: the Book of Enoch, the chronicle of God's mistakes, within whose pages lie the seeds for the end of everything. <br><br>From the scene of the crime, Conan Doyle embarks on a path that leads him to the sleazy underworld of New York City's Bowery and a series of deceptively disparate—but decidedly connected—murders. And as he calls upon the scattered members of the Arcanum for aid, he also finds himself embroiled in a story of war as old as time itself. Not of a struggle between countries, but between darkness and light.<br>Peopled with the twentieth century's most famous—and infamous—figures, here is an extraordinary tale in which the stakes go beyond the realm of humankind—into the divine.<br><br><br><i>From the Hardcover edition.</i>