Marcus Sinclair is a history teacher whose life is stuck in neutral when he inherits a papyrus scroll from his antiquarian uncle. The mysterious scroll might contain a lost masterpiece from ancient Rome or perhaps an ancient recipe for personal tranquility, but it’s unreadable unless Marcus can figure out a way to unroll the scroll without destroying it. His quest takes him to Naples, where he befriends a Google software engineer days before the man is found dead. Marcus is interviewed by an investigative journalist, Kristi Grainger, and they find themselves on parallel paths leading to a Neapolitan trafficker in antiquities, a tech mogul obsessed with the distant past, and a clutch of academics searching for the lost library of Herculaneum. In a seaside city that is by turns lush and lethal, Marcus must confront the unraveling of more than a scroll.

This novel is inspired by a real place — the Villa dei Papri, the only library from antiquity to have survived — and coincides with the Vesuvius Challenge, a real-life international competition to decipher Herculaneum scrolls.

Eric Siblin is an award-winning journalist and filmmaker, and was the pop music critic at the Montreal Gazette. He made the transition to television in 2002 with the documentary Word Slingers, which explores the wacky subculture of competitive Scrabble tournaments. The film aired in Canada and the U.S. and won a Jury Award at the Yorkton Short Film & Video Festival. He also co-directed the documentary In Search of Sleep: An Insomniac's Journey, which aired in Canada, the U.S., and Europe. The Cello Suites is his first book.

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