The Blood Ledger

About this book

In the alternative Mediterranean world of the Meridian League, privilege is not inherited through family memory but through official blood ledgers controlling trade, property, guild membership, and access to entire sections of the harbor. Elias Voss, a 42-year-old master forger in 1552 Ancona, has built his fortune by manufacturing prestigious ancestors for ambitious merchants while concealing his own fishing-village birth. When he creates a lineage for grain merchant's son Dario Bellandi, the new entry collides with a suppressed claim belonging to a disgraced fifteenth-century banking family. The discrepancy draws the attention of principled archivist Lucia Ferra, Dario's idealistic sister Caterina, and Nikoleta Drakos, a rival forger who knows how much Elias has to lose. Moving non-linearly among the archive burnings of 1497, Elias's apprenticeship in 1524, border skirmishes in 1538, and the mounting unrest of 1552, the novel traces how private alterations become public history. As restricted docks, grain shortages, and competing claims push Ancona toward a merchant uprising, Elias must decide whether the system that enriched him is still worth protecting—and which names he is unwilling to sacrifice to save himself.

Book details

Genres:

Historical Fiction, Alternative History, Political Mystery

Language:

en

Published:

2026-07-12

Content rating:

PG