Eva Traube Abrams, a semi-retired librarian in Florida, is shelving books one morning when her eyes lock on a photograph in a magazine lying open nearby. She freezes; it's an image of a book she hasn't seen in sixty-five years--a book she recognizes as The Book of Lost Names.

Scholar Jules Addison and scavenger Amelia Radcliffe join forces to unravel secrets of a long-extinct civilization, only to discover something that could spell the end of the human race.