In her long career as America's most beloved suspense writer, Mary Higgins Clark's The Lost Years is her most astonishing and dramatic work to date. At its center is a discovery that, if authenticated, may be the most revered document in human history - the holiest of the holy - and certainly the most coveted and valuable object in the world.

Dr. Richard Callahan, a world-respected biblical scholar, is astonished when Mariah Lyons shows him a letter left to her by her late father, a distinguished professor of ancient history. The letter, which contains a translation from a 2,000-year-old papyrus scroll, is accompanied by a dusty clay jar and a fragile fragment of papyrus torn from a scroll. If accurate, the translation made by Mariah's father, an Arabic scholar, shows that the scroll contains a letter in Christ's own handwriting, and more than that, concerns a pivotal moment in his life.

But the rest of the scroll has vanished, and Mariah is aware that somebody else out there wants it. With Dr. Callahan's help, Mariah is drawn into the search for the scroll, the very existence of which might change the world - and for which somebody close to her would kill to possess. Step by step, Mariah's quest takes her deeper and deeper into danger.

With all the elements that have made her a worldwide best seller, Mary Higgins Clark's The Lost Years is unpausable, a thriller that is at once a breathless mystery and a hunt for the most precious religious and archeological treasure of all time.