Beneath the Starlit Skies

A gripping historical mystery based on parallel lives. When Elena Sinclaire's father disappears, he leaves behind only a cryptic warning and his obsession with a 16th-century Spanish treasure ship, the San Esteban. Hunted by the powerful Mendoza family of merchants, Elena discovers her dad wasn't after treasure. He was searching for proof that the Mendozas weaponized the Spanish Inquisition to steal her family's control of the New World silver trade and erase the García name from history.  In 1554, sixteen-year-old Isabella García sneaks aboard the San Esteban. As a converso fleeing the Inquisition, she carries a dying servant's signed confession naming the Mendozas as murderers and forgers. When the ship goes down in a storm, Isabella has one chance to hide the confession where it can survive four centuries and expose the conspiracy that destroyed her family.  Four centuries later, as Elena decodes Isabella's diaries and follows clues across two continents, she uncovers a wooden toy that connects to conspiracy of murder, theft, and identity erasure that connects her directly to Isabella's desperate voyage. With enemies closing in and her father's fate unknown, Elena must decide how far she'll go to reclaim what was stolen, and whether revenge is worth the deadly price.  Throughout 16th-century Spain, converso families fled persecution and reinvented their identities. In this gripping historical mystery, Matthew Pittman reimagines one woman's fight to protect a deathbed confession that could destroy an empire...