Gilly Macmillan sets her latest novel, THE BURNING LIBRARY, in Scotland. But it is not long before the action traverses the UK and heads down a historical thriller path similar to what we might expect from an author like Dan Brown.

The book opens on an isolated island in the Western Hebrides of Scotland. A paranoid woman named Eleanor Bruton is attacked and killed in the cabin where she had been hiding in what she thought was safety and obscurity. This sets the tone for the wild ride that is to come involving Dr. Anya Brown, a scholar who has found international fame due to her translation of a cryptic work known as Folio 9. This acclaim puts her on the radar of Diana Cornish, who approaches Anya with a job offer to work with her at the Institute of Manuscript Studies in St. Andrews.

"THE BURNING LIBRARY is an intelligent thriller... The characters are quite complex, and the ancient history is exciting and frightening in the best ways."

Anya cannot turn this down. But she is so overwhelmed with the honor that she is completely oblivious to the fact that Diana and her colleagues all belong to one side of an ancient battle between two legendary sects that are seeking a work of such renown that it could change the world beyond the academia level. Anya is about to find herself in the middle of these two powerful groups of women --- the Order of St. Katherine and the Fellowship of the Larks --- that will stop at nothing to get what they want.

Anya asks if Diana can do anything for her boyfriend, who is finishing his studies at Oxford, and she agrees to have him placed locally so he can live with Anya in their cottage located in St. Andrews. In a storyline that runs concurrently to Anya’s, we meet Detective Constable Clio Spicer, who is investigating the murder of Eleanor, a skilled academic who was seeking the same hidden work that the dueling sects are after. It will not be long before Clio’s story converges with Anya’s.

When the Order of St. Katherine strikes back in response to Eleanor’s homicide, we witness a lab filled with the important work of a Lark being burned down. The deadly game of one-upmanship will not end here. The body count rises, and one death in particular finally awakens Anya to the reality that her new job might not be exactly what she had anticipated. When she receives a chilling message inferring that Folio 9 may have been forged, she begins to doubt her own prowess and realizes that her role in this drama may be something else entirely.

THE BURNING LIBRARY is an intelligent thriller, and the event behind the novel’s title is one that will have readers recoiling in shock. The characters are quite complex, and the ancient history is exciting and frightening in the best ways.