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"For those of us who enjoyed The Da Vinci Code, what historical fiction do you recommend next? Ellen responds: This is a timely question, because the success of The Da Vinci Code and a subsequent mystery, The Rule of Four, practically ensures that we&amp;#039;ll see lots of imitators in the years ahead. The beauty of The Da Vinci Code was that it covered so many bases: history, religion and science. So, to get the same fix, you&amp;#039;ll need to figure out which parts of the book most appealed to you.   For me, the theological aspect stands out. That&amp;#039;s why I&amp;#039;d recommend two novels that deal with church history in different ways. The first, and most similar to The Da Vinci Code, is James Rollins&amp;#039;s fast-paced Map of Bones, which starts with a bang when thugs bust into a Mass at the Cologne Cathedral in Germany, wreaking mayhem as they steal the bones in the reliquary. Rollins&amp;#039;s fictional Sigma Force, an elite and secret intelligence arm of the U.S. government, joins with the Vatican&amp;#039;s secret squad to uncover the mysterious cult behind the crime. Map of Bones is an adventure story that travels through Europe&amp;#039;s finest cathedrals and the Near East, giving plenty of church history to go with the action.   Less action-packed but lovely in the way it re-creates a long-ago era is the just-published first novel by Brenda Rickman Vantrease, The Illuminator. If you liked The Birth of Venus, Sarah Dunant&amp;#039;s bestseller about Florence on the eve of the Renaissance, you&amp;#039;ll love The Illuminator. Set in 14th-century England, it concerns John Wycliffe, the theologian who translated the Bible into English. His disagreements with the Catholic Church set an uneasy stage for Finn, a manuscript illustrator and Wycliffe sympathizer, and the widow Lady Kathryn Blackingham. Vantrease&amp;#039;s book tells a good tale and gives a sense of the backdrop for two major historical events that occurred much later, the Reformation and Henry VIII&amp;#039;s split with the Catholic Church. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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