After being tasked with stealing a page from a priceless, ancient book, brilliant scientist and master thief Gideon Crew discovers a hidden map on the back of the book's parchment.

"Murders plague a university library--and only an intrepid book cataloger can solve them. For the staff of the library at the center of The Widening Stain, it's easy enough to dismiss the death of a woman who fell from a rolling ladder as nothing more than an unfortunate accident. It's more difficult, however, to explain away the strangled corpse of a man found inside a locked room, surrounded by rare and obscure erotica. And that's not all--a valuable...