THE INNER CIRCLE

There are stories no one knows. Hidden stories. I love those stories. And since I work in the National Archives, I find those stories for a living.

So says Benjy January, a young archivist who spends his days working in the storehouse for the most important documents of the U.S. government. Benjy has always been the keeper of other people's stories, never a part of the story himself...

Until now.

When Clementine Kaye, Benjy's childhood crush whom he hasn't seen in twenty years, shows up at the archives asking for his help tracking down her long-lost father, Benjy attempts to impress her by showing her the SCIF -- Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility -- where the President of the United States has his private weekly reading visits. When they accidently happen upon a secret document, an over two hundred-year-old dictionary once belonging to George Washington, hidden in the underside of the desk chair, Benjy and Clementine find themselves suddenly entangled in a web of deception, conspiracy, and murder.

Soon a man is dead, and Benjy is on the run as he races to figure out what the President could possibly want with a centuries-old dictionary. His search will lead him to discover secrets buried deep in American history, including the founding of a civilian spy unit during the Revolutionary War called the Culper Ring that still exists today -- a group whose very existence depends on its secrecy. A secrecy, Benji soon discovers, that some consider worth dying for.