It was a diverse and rural land of hamlets and villages, home to four and a half million subjects who lived under both his rule and the fading influence of the Catholic Church. In between flowed the Danube, Inn, and Isar Rivers. He’d occupied the throne for the past seventeen of those years, governing a principality that stretched from the jagged Alps in the south to the forests of Prussia in the north. The latest in a long line of Wittelsbachs who’d ruled Bavaria for over seven hundred years. For an ordinary person such a preference would not have mattered. He’d long ago stopped living in the sun, finding the serenity of a velvet sky dotted with sparkling stars far more preferable to the warmth of a summer day. LUDWIG FRIEDRICH WILHELM VON WITTELSBACH LOVED THE NIGHT. In a race across Bavaria for clues hidden in Ludwig’s three fairytale castles–Neuschwanstein, Linderhof and Herrenchiemsee–Malone and Daniels battle an ever-growing list of deadly adversaries, all intent on finding the last kingdom.īy clicking ‘Sign Up,’ I acknowledge that I have read and agree to Hachette Book Group’s Privacy PolicyĪnd Terms of Use PREVIEW AN EXCERPT PROLOGUE Everything hinges on a 19th century deed which proves that Ludwig’s long-rumored search bore fruit–legal title to lands that Germany, China, and the United States all now want, only for vastly different reasons. Daniels has also managed to gain the trust of the prince of Bavaria, a frustrated second son intent on eliminating his brother, the duke, and restoring the Wittelsbach monarchy, only now with him as king.
After many months, Malone’s protégé, Luke Daniels, has managed to infiltrate a renegade group intent on winning Bavarian independence from Germany. But a question remains: did he succeed?Įnter Cotton Malone. A place he could retreat into and rule as he wished.
Eccentric to the point of madness, history tells us that in the years before he died Ludwig engaged in a worldwide search for a new kingdom, one separate, apart, and in lieu of Bavaria. King Ludwig II of Bavaria was an enigmatic figure who was deposed in 1886, mysteriously drowning three days later.
From celebrated New York Times bestselling author, Steve Berry, comes the latest Cotton Malone adventure, in which the discovery of a lost historical document challenges the global might of the United States.
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