Kit stared at this fellow questors. "Is this it : the End of Everything?" Set in 17th century and 21st century London, the Enlightenment-era court of the Hapsburgs, China during the Qing Dynasty and ancient Egypt, Bright Empires is a five-volume fantasy. In The Skin Map, Kit Livingstone and his great- grandfather, Cosimo, are brought together to find a map originally tattooed on the skin of its author, a seventeenth-century explorer who had discovered the secret of access to other worlds and parallel universes. Malign forces are also after the map and, to the surprise of all, the map proves to be not the end of the quest but its beginning. A far greater prize remains, and a much more dangerous search will need to be undertaken. It starts with small, seemingly insignificant wrinkles in time. Then a busy bridge suddenly disappears, spilling cars into the sea. A beast from another realm roams modern streets. Napoleon's army appears in 1930s Damascus ready for battle. The questors of the Zetetic Society are spread across the universe. At the command centre of the Jansky Very Large Array Radio Telescope astronomers think that parts of the universe have stopped expanding : and begun to contract. Mina is stuck on a plain of solid ice, only an angry cave lion for company. And evil Lord Burleigh is locked in a dungeon, his survival dependent on the kindness of the very man he tried to kill. Kit and Cass are back in the Stone Age trying to reach the Spirit Well. But a huge yew tree now covers the portal, cutting off their path. Unless they can find a way through, Kit's fears for the end of the future will be fulfilled. In this final volume of the fantastic Bright Empires series, Stephen R. Lawhead brings his multi-layered tale to a stunning and satisfying conclusion. STEPHEN R. LAWHEAD is the bestselling author of The Pendragon Cycle and The Song of Albion trilogy. He lives in Oxford, UK.