Behind the closed doors of The Cloisters, shocking secrets, and a mysterious deck of tarot cards spark a deadly power game without a close knit group of researchers.
When Ann Stillwell arrives in New York City, she expects to spend her summer working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Instead, she finds herself assigned to The Cloisters, a Gothic museum and garden renowned for its collection of medieval art and its enigmatic researchers; Patrick Roland, the charismatic curator specializing in the history of tarot; Rachel Monday, Patrick's brilliant curatorial associate; and Leo Bitburg, the gardener charged with cultivating the museum's poisonous plants.
Eager to escape her troubled past in rural Washington, Ann is happy to indulge the researcher's' more outlandish theories, only to find that their fascination with ancient divination runs deeper than academic obsession. Patrick is determined to prove the medieval tarot holds the key to accurately telling the future. When Ann discovers a breakthrough in the form of a cryptic deck of fifteenth-century tarot cards, she finds herself at the center of a dangerous fame of power, decisions and ambition. As their circle reaches its breaking point, Ann must decide if the tarot cards can teacher her not only about the past but also about her future.
Deeply researched, lushly told, and thrillingly paced, The Cloisters explores the shimmering line between what is real and what is imagined, the magical melding of the modern and the arcane, and the power we have to defy what is written in the stars and to shape our own fates.
