From the author of the bestselling ATLANTIS comes a thrilling novel of buried secrets, age-old mysteries and a conspiracy surrounding the fabled Ark of the Covenant.

586 BC The ancient world is in meltdown. The Babylonians have ravaged the Holy Land, and Jerusalem has fallen. In desperation, the temple priests look to the greatest navigators ever known to save their holiest of treasures.

1943 A group of Allied codebreakers, under Churchill's direct command, work to stop a top-secret exchange between the Nazis and the Japanese. Yet even they know nothing of the ancient artefact hidden on board a ship whose fate they have just sealed.

Present-day Marine archaeologist Jack Howard and his friend Costas undertake a dangerous dive hunting for Nazi gold in a wreck perched on the edge of the continental shelf. What they glimpse there leads Jack to piece together the truth of one of the greatest ancient voyages of discovery, one whose real purpose he could scarcely have imagined. Jack must fuse past and present as he never has done before in a terrifying final showdown on a desperate mission for humanity.

* * *TESTAMENT, the ninth of Jack Howard series of archaeological adventure novels, was published in UK paperback on 18 May 2017 and the US in hardback on 14 March, with the US paperback out on 2 January 2018; the French edition was published in January and the Greek edition in May.