Synopsis
In her virtuosic debut, Ghostwalk, Rebecca Stott unfolded an extraordinary and true mystery involving Isaac Newton and set in seventeenth-century Cambridge. The Coral Thief is another intriguing mystery and love story, centering on pre-Darwinian theories of evolution and set in Paris right after Napoleon's surrender at Waterloo.
Upon his arrival in Paris, where he has come to study anatomy, Daniel Connor, a young medical student from Edinburgh, finds that his letters of introduction and precious coral specimens have been stolen by the beautiful woman with whom he shared a stagecoach. But when he begins searching for his lost items---and the alluring woman who stole them---Daniel is thrust into a tumultuous, underground world of philosopher thieves obsessed with the emerging theories of evolution. As he is pulled into their plot to steal a precious jewel from the Jardin des Plantes, and as he falls in love with the mysterious coral thief, Daniel is introduced...
The Washington Post - Anna Mundow
In her first novel, Ghostwalk…Rebecca Stott established herself as a subtle writer who wears her scholarship lightly…Thanks to Stott's deftness and sly humor, Ghostwalk was as sprightly as it was enlightening. The same can be said of her latest novel, The Coral Thief…With consummate skill and compassion, Stott plunges Daniel the innocent into a serpentine plot that involves spies, philosophers, revolutionaries and scientists. Treasure may be at the heart of Stott's mystery, but fossils and corals are equally precious in this hybrid novel of action and ideas. Like Daniel, the reader emerges from The Coral Thief having had an adventure and an education.