Charlie Thorne and the Royal Society

Charlie Thorne and the Royal Society

In the fourth installment of the New York Times bestselling Charlie Thorne series—which #1 New York Times bestselling author Chris Grabenstein called “a real page-burner”—Charlie searches for Isaac Newton ’ s secret treasure across Europe and Australia. Charlie Thorne is a genius. Charlie Thorne is fearless. Charlie Thorne may have finally met her match. Charlie Thorne is used to being on the run. Ever since she was recruited by the CIA to track down Einstein’s most dangerous equation, Charlie and former CIA agents, Dante Garcia and Milana Moon, have traveled around the world to prevent history’s greatest discoveries from falling into the wrong hands. But after beating others to the secrets hidden by Einstein, Darwin, and Cleopatra, they find they are not the only ones searching for an immensely powerful discovery of Isaac Newton’s. From a chase over the rooftops of Cambridge University to scaling the Sydney Harbour Bridge to skirting a volcanic eruption, Charlie will need to think one step ahead of her opponents to follow Newton’s trail of devious clues and keep herself out of the hands of the many enemies who are hot on her tail. Stuart Gibbs is the author of five New York Times bestselling series: Spy School, FunJungle, Moon Base Alpha, Charlie Thorne, and Once Upon a Tim—as well as the new nonfiction series Spy School Secret Files. He has written screenplays, worked on a whole bunch of animated films, developed TV shows, been a newspaper columnist, and researched capybaras. Stuart lives with his family in Los Angeles. You can learn more about what he’s up to at StuartGibbs.com. Chapter One ONE Craobh Haven, Scotland Modern Day The house hadn’t been easy to find, but that was the point. The man who lived and worked there was wanted by Interpol, the CIA, and a dozen other law enforcement agencies. Only people who were desperate enough—and wealthy enough—to afford his services could go through all the trouble to track him down. The house sat on a small peninsula that jutted into Loch Melfort on the ragged western shore of Scotland, surrounded by hundreds of acres of pasture. On a sunny summer day, it would probably have been beautiful, but now, a month into fall, it was gloomy and foreboding. Dark clouds hung low in the sky, and a cold rain was whipped sideways by the wind. From the outside, the home looked much like every other old manor in the area, a once-grand place that had been battered by centuries of bad weather. Gray stone walls speckled with patches of moss. A sagging thatched roof. The whole structure tilted slightly to the side, as though the years of wind had slowly begun to shove it over. Inside, however, it was surprisingly modern. The original cramped interior had been gutted, and now there were spacious rooms decorated with fashionable furniture and expensive art. But the most contemporary part of all was a secret, a room that could only be accessed through an honest-to-goodness hidden door in a bookshelf. Pulling on a copy of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None triggered the door to open, leading to a staircase that spiraled down into the earth, until it reached a workshop filled with so much state-of-the-art computing and printing equipment that it looked like the documents lab at CIA headquarters. This was where the forger worked. He was younger than Charlie Thorne had expected. Barely thirty, by her guess. She was upset at herself for being surprised by this. Charlie knew, better than almost anyone, that people could do exceptional things at a very young age. After all, she was only thirteen but had already solved several ingenious mysteries that had confounded the rest of the world for decades. Even though the room should have been chilly, given that it was buried in the dank earth of Scotland, the electronic equipment generated so much heat that it felt as though a fire was blazing. Charlie had shed the thick sweater and raincoat she had worn on her way there. The forger was wearing only a vintage T-shirt from a band he was too young to have ever seen in person, jeans with holes in them, and sandals. He had a policy of not asking questions about his clients, but Charlie could tell that he was thinking about violating it. He kept glancing at her, wondering what someone her age was doing, seeking the services of someone like him. Charlie looked and acted older than thirteen. Most people assumed she was closer to seventeen or eighteen, but even that was awfully young to be seeking forged passports. To add to her mystique, Charlie hadn’t said a single word since she’d arrived. Dante had been doing most of the talking. Dante Garcia was rather young as well, considering that, until recently, he had been a respected CIA agent running a highly classified operation. He was only in his late twenties, with the same stocky, muscular wrestler’s physique he’d had since college. He was Charlie’s half brother, although for most of their lives, they