Before they met, he knew nothing of the book, or the story surrounding it.

He hadn’t known about its size or the scope of its contents or the blackening skin of its pages or the ornate, nearly perfect penmanship that adorned them. He hadn’t known that it was housed in Prague, in one of the collections of a Holy Roman Emperor, patron of the arts and practicing alchemist. He hadn’t known that a hundred and sixty donkeys had been slaughtered to further its creation.

And he was completely unaware of the seven missing pages.

The pages that would lead to his undoing.

These are the opening lines of The Paradise Prophecy, which refer to a book that's very much real—but that few people know about.

That book is the Codex Gigas. Or, as it's more commonly known, The Devil's Bible, which legend tells us was created by a Benedictine monk in order to keep his brethren from walling him up alive, after he'd sinned against the church.

It's said that the monk took just a single night to complete the tome—a book containing hundreds of handwritten pages and illustrations—and he was only able to do this after he appealed to Satan himself for help.

This book, which is the size of a small packing trunk (hence the name Codex Gigas or Big Book), still exists today, and is on display at the National Library in Stockholm. You can learn more about it here.

But what I, as a writer, find intriguing about the book, are its seven missing pages, and the simple fact that nobody seems to know where these pages went or what they might contain.

This is what sparked, in my mind, the central mystery behind The Paradise Prophecy. A mystery linked to ancient rituals and religious doctrine and coded messages and dark angels who walk the earth, threatening us at every turn.

My two heroes, Sebastian LaLaurie and Bernadette Callahan, spend a considerable amount of a time and energy to uncover this mystery, and I have to say I had a blast making it as difficult as possible for them.

I hope you'll have just as much fun taking the ride with them.