Fans of James Rollins’ Sigma Force series will have to wait until 2019 for his next full-length adventure. Though previously scheduled to come out this December, I was able to confirm that Rollins’ next novel has, in fact, been pushed back to January of next year.
Here’s everything we know. . .
Originally titled The Hammer of Witches, Rollins’ 14th Sigma thriller underwent a title swap to Crucible, the first of two major changes. Obviously, the release date is the second notable change, having been moved back a month for undisclosed reasons. The book will follow The Demon Crown (2017), which was praised by critics and readers alike, and we know that it’ll feature a particularly dangerous storyline for Commander Gray Pierce, who is front and center in the plot description, which you can read below.
In the race to save one of their own, Sigma Force must wrestle with the deepest spiritual mysteries of mankind in this mind-expanding adventure from the #1 New York Times bestselling author, told with his trademark blend of cutting-edge science, historical mystery, and pulse-pounding action.
Arriving home on Christmas Eve, Commander Gray Pierce discovers his house ransacked, his pregnant lover missing, and his best friend’s wife, Kat, unconscious on the kitchen floor. With no shred of evidence to follow, his one hope to find the woman he loves and his unborn child is Kat, the only witness to what happened. But the injured woman is in a semi-comatose state and cannot speak—until a brilliant neurologist offers a radical approach to “unlock” her mind long enough to ask a few questions.
What Pierce learns from Kat sets Sigma Force on a frantic quest for answers that are connected to mysteries reaching back to the Spanish Inquisition and to one of the most reviled and blood-soaked books in human history—a Medieval text known as the Malleus Maleficarum, the Hammer of Witches. What they uncover hidden deep in the past will reveal a frightening truth in the present and a future on the brink of annihilation, and force them to confront the ultimate question: What does it mean to have a soul?
Fans anxious to pre-order Crucible can do so here, or anywhere else books are sold.
Praised as “one of today’s finest book reviewers” by New York Times bestselling author Gayle Lynds, Ryan Steck (“The Godfather of the thriller genre” — Ben Coes) has “quickly established himself as the authority on mysteries and thrillers” (Author A.J. Tata). He currently lives in Southwest Michigan with his wife and their six children.