The discovery of the Lost Gospels at Nag Hammadi so inspired writer Tucker Malarkey that she decided to use it as background for her mystery "Resurrection" (Riverhead Books, 2007).

It's a suspense novel that opens up two worlds -- that of Cairo after World War II and the ancient world of the Gnostic Gospels.

Malarkey, a former reported for the Washington Post, has written what People magazine described as weaving an "elegantly written thriller."

The book is about Gamma Bastian who journeys from London in 1947 to take care of the estate of her father, an archaeologist who died under mysterious circumstances. Bastian soon finds that her movements are being watched and that her father, before his death, had been working on an archaeological discovery that could change the Christian world.

"Resurrection," a selection of the Book of the Month Club, Mystery Guild, Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club and Quality Paperback Book Club, stems from Malarkey's own intense interest in religion, her love of research (she spent two years researching "Sleeping Through History," a book she co-authored with fellow journalist Haynes Johnson) and her wish to live on a remote island off the coast of Kenya where there were no phones or cars.

"For some crazy reason, I thought that this was where I was going to figure out my life," she said. "I felt I needed to get far away from the civilization that I was so submerged in -- the strange, insular world of Washington, D.C. -- and look at something completely different. I remember this intense desire to see a huge, endless sky, unbroken by buildings and bridges and jet streams. So I went by myself because for some reason I felt absolutely confident that I would be fine on my own. I was. And my experience in Africa was so rich and powerful that I stayed for two years. Africa was where I decided to write fiction."

IfYouGo

Tucker Malarkey

When: 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. April 11

Where: Women and Children First, 5233 N. Clark St., Chicago

FYI: (773) 769-9299