Annmarie Banks

Annmarie Banks draws historical fantasy from her long experience with rare and out-of-print books. The Hermetica of Elysium, her first novel and the opening volume of The Elysium Texts, follows Nadira across Spain and Italy in 1494 as competing powers search for a forbidden manuscript. Nadira’s ability to read Greek, Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew makes her essential to that pursuit, while the Spanish Inquisition and the political ambitions of Renaissance Europe give the story its historical pressure. A 2011 edition came from Knox Robinson Publishing. Banks spent two decades buying and selling used books before turning to fiction, an occupational background that informs the novel’s fascination with hidden texts, lost knowledge, and the people who preserve it. The Hermetica of Elysium begins a sequence continued by The Necromancer’s Grimoire and The Books of the Dead, extending Nadira’s development from servant and scrivener into a figure capable of shaping the mysteries she reads.