Before Rome Fell

What if Polish history began a thousand years before anyone taught you? When archaeologist Marta Wolanska receives a cryptic email from an elderly monk days before his death, she expects a routine inquiry. What she finds beneath a cellar in Czestochowa will rewrite everything she thought she knew about her country's past. Hidden in a sealed chamber: fifty maps, hundreds of documents, and an archive preserved for a thousand years by a secret brotherhood of monks. Evidence of a sophisticated pre-Christian civilisation that traded amber with Rome, developed its own writing system, and maintained a dynasty of forty-three rulers — all systematically erased from the historical record after 966 AD. But someone in Rome does not want this history made public. And someone closer to home is willing to burn it all down. Part archaeological thriller, part historical revelation, Before Rome Fell moves between the present-day race to authenticate and protect the discovery and the vivid voices of those who lived it: a warrior-priestess defending a sacred grove, a merchant-king negotiating with Byzantine traders, a ruler who sealed his people's memory in amber and trusted the future to find it. For readers of Umberto Eco, Kate Mosse, and Robert Harris — a novel about the resilience of a people, the violence of erasure, and the stubborn persistence of truth. The fire was never out. It was waiting to be found.