13-year-old Tag Whitmore is a math prodigy. Too bad no one cares.

Not at school, where his love of prime numbers, pattern recognition, and solving ancient puzzles earns him nothing but weird looks. But when his dad’s engineering job takes them to Florence, Italy, Tag stumbles into a high-stakes mystery that’s been hidden since the Renaissance—and suddenly, math isn’t just a list of problems to solve. It’s the key to surviving secret societies, cracking historical codes, and unlocking the fabric of space and time.

Inside a forgotten chamber beneath a centuries-old cathedral, Tag discovers a fragment of the Cipher of Shadows—a legendary set of equations written by Johannes Kepler. These mysterious mathematical formulas can manipulate gravity, light, and possibly open portals between dimensions. Hunted by the secretive Kepler Society and helped by a daring girl with secrets of her own, Tag must race across Florence’s rooftops, cathedrals, and clock towers before history repeats itself—with catastrophic consequences.

Blending real-world mathematics, historical science, and nonstop action, Tag Whitmore and the Cipher of Shadows is the first book in a STEM-infused middle grade adventure series perfect for fans of Artemis Fowl, National Treasure, and The Mysterious Benedict Society. Follow a brilliant boy as he deciphers ancient codes, unravels hidden history, and discovers that sometimes the most powerful weapon… is your mind.