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Start giftingThe Coral Thief
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Learn moreIn 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 to a radical theory of evolution that irrevocably changes his conception of the world in which he lives.
As riveting and beautifully rendered as Ghostwalk, The Coral Thief is a provocative and tantalizing mix of history, love, and philosophy.
Rebecca Stott is the author of several academic books on Victorian literature and culture; two books of nonfiction, including a partial biography of Charles Darwin; and a cultural history of the oyster. She is also the author of the novel Ghostwalk, which has been translated into twelve languages. She is currently a professor of English literature and creative writing at the University of East Anglia, and she lives in Cambridge.
British-born Simon Prebble has built a successful career that spans the Atlantic. As a stage and television actor, he has played in everything from soaps to Shakespeare, but it is as a veteran narrator of over four hundred audiobooks that he has made his mark since coming to the United States in 1990. As one of AudioFile magazine's Golden Voices, Simon has received over twenty Earphones Awards and five Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Awards, and he has been a finalist fourteen times for an Audie Award, the audiobook industry's version of the Oscar. In 2006, Publishers Weekly named him Narrator of the Year, and he was named Booklist's 2010 Voice of Choice.