Reaching print for the first time after the author's death in 2023, this novel is a fitting epitaph for one of the best writers of hard science fiction in recent years: a seven-century science fiction mystery with echoes of his Hugo-nominated, lyrical novel Eifelheim.

The book starts in Milwaukee in 1965, where Frank Delacorte has taken a fellowship at an institute reconstructing records of the past — old books, manuscripts, and letters. His particular assignment is the investigation of the Peruzzi manuscript, a medieval codex that just does not add up. As he and his colleague Wilma get deeper into their separate projects, they find their mysteries converging and discover someone or something has been changing historical records over time to hide some essential knowledge.

Back in the 1320s, a scholar named Henricius is running for his life from the assassin Adolfus. Henricius has been translating old Greek and Arabic secrets, and what he has found has put a price on his head and a call for his work to be destroyed.

A meticulously crafted tale told over two converging timelines, The Shipwrecks of Time asks what antiquity really is: the remnants that escaped the wreck of history — or the pieces someone chose to leave afloat.