Author Readalikes

A small golden amulet encrusted with jewels of jasper, carnelian and lapis lazuli called the Eye of Dawn is believed to have supernatural powers. When MSNBC reporter Dana Landau stumbles over the amulet, and ignorant of the legends, she sends it as a gift to her sister Natalie hours before being murdered. A museum curator with an expertise in protective amulets Natalie is drawn into the competition for the amulet. . .

A dense, complicated novel of religious suspense featuring an ancient enigma.

Formerly a doctoral student in classics Jonathan Marcus travels to Rome to examine a fragment of an ancient stone map and stumbles across a secret--a hidden message carved inside the stone itself. . .

Like Brown's works, a fast-paced thriller revolving around a secret society and secrets of the Catholic Church. Unlike Brown, Case does not include any strong historical elements.

A doctor's confession to an Italian priest is so disturbing that the priest refuses to absolve him, then closes his church and waits four days for an audience with a cardinal in the Vatican. A few months later, a woman and her young son are gruesomely murdered and their house set on fire.

Joe Lassiter, the woman's brother and a D.C.-area detective, discovers that his sister and nephew were only two of 34 victims worldwide, all mothers and toddler boys, killed in their beds and then burned beyond recognition. They were all connected through an Umbrian fertility clinic run by a scientist and theologian who, not unexpectedly, is himself now dead, his clinic a pile of ashes. At the center of this international carnage looms Umbra Domini, Shadow of the Lord, an ultra-secret Roman Catholic fraternity. At great risk, Joe sets out to save the one woman and child who have so far escaped Umbra's reach and in doing so discovers the staggering truth about these slaughtered innocents.

A thriller set in the near future. Unlike Brown's works, Montalbano's story is focused on the individuals within the Catholic Church.

Battle-scarred Paul Lorenzo is a hard-nosed ex-Miami cop who followed his friend Pope Tredi (short for "Tredicesimo," as in Pius XIII) to Rome when he became pontiff.

Now a Roman Catholic friar and chief Vatican troubleshooter, Paul is called upon to find out who pushed a Vatican priest to his death from a catwalk high in the dome of St. Peter's Basilica. The trail leads him to an underground conspiracy aimed at subverting Tredi's dogma-shattering reforms. As other figures close to the papal throne are slain, however, the crimes seem somehow wedded to the old days in Miami, when Tredi--then known by the media as the Cocaine Cardinal--was the scourge of the Colombian drug cartel.

After fifty years in hiding, the Nazi war criminal known as the Butcher of Spiegelgrund has finally been tracked down by Father Anthony Fowler, a CIA operative and a member of the Vatican's secret service.

He wants something from the Butcher--a candle covered in filigree that was stolen from a Jewish family many years before. But it isn't the gold Fowler is after. As Fowler holds a flame to the wax, the missing fragment of an ancient map that uncovers the location of the Ten Commandments given to Moses is revealed.

Soon Fowler is involved in an expedition to Jordan set up by a reclusive billionaire. But there is a traitor in the group who has ties to terrorist organizations back in the United States, and who is patiently awaiting the moment to strike.

Arguably the most mysterious woman in the Bible, Mary Magdalene has been called a prostitute, a female divinity figure, a church leader and more. (Mary Magdalene after all was the first person to whom the risen Christ appeared--and the one instructed to tell others the good news.)Grounded and inspired by research Margaret George attempts to tell a 'diary of a soul'.

A novel that imagines a different role for women in Christianity's early years. Perdue imagines a world where the Vatican has for centuries hidden proof of a female Messiah named Sophia during the early days of the Christian Church. Now Zoe Ridgeway, an art broker and her husband are drawn into a web of conspiracy, murder and intrigue that begins and ends with the mystery of Sophia.