The Codex Conspiracy (Dimension Dancer Trilogy Book 2)

A Dimension-Bending Historical Adventure Through Ancient Rome

Time is not what Shep Jackson thought it was. After the FBI storms his Manhattan hedge fund to arrest him for a crime he didn’t commit, a phone call from his father—dead for three years—reveals an even stranger truth: the past and future are not fixed points in time, but different dimensions. And Shep has been chosen to move between them.

In Rome in 62 AD, a homeless fourteen-year-old named Rufus possesses an ancient dagger said to control the destiny of the Roman Empire—the same weapon once used against Julius Caesar. Shep’s mission is to keep it from those who would use its power to alter history.

From the trading floors of New York to Nero’s Rome and the brutal siege of Jerusalem, Shep must navigate conspiracies, dangerous alliances, and enemies across multiple dimensions. Along the way, he encounters figures including Nero, the Apostle Paul, Vespasian, Titus, Thomas Cromwell, and Anne Askew, the mysterious woman whose fate Shep is determined to change.

Blending historical fiction, time travel, adventure, theology, and intrigue, The Codex Conspiracy explores good and evil, fate and free will, and whether deeply imperfect people can still accomplish extraordinary things. It is the second book in the Dimension Dancer Trilogy.

Enter a world where history is another dimension—and changing it could change everything.

Excerpt from the book

My name is Shep Jackson and I’m a dimension dancer. That might sound like a confession, and it probably is. To understand why, you need to know exactly what that term implies. Dimension dancers are people who bend the rules, feel comfortable in gray areas, and take an innovative approach to the law and rules in general. However, at the core of their being, they know the difference between right and wrong…good and evil. They hate hypocrisy, oppression, and exploitation. They love God. They always root for the underdog.

To put this into perspective, you need to understand the basics of theophysics, a discipline that combines systematic theology and Newtonian physics. What are its basic premises you might ask? Time does not exist. There is no past and present. The universe consists of multiple dimensions. Rather than going back and forth in time, dimension dancers move from one dimension to another. Why in hell would they want to do that? Because sometimes the bad guy…or whatever you want to call him…wants to mess with history. Screw up the world even worse than it already is. Someone needs to stop him. Set things straight. You guessed it. That’s us.

But why ask the morally compromised to do this? Why not send the people who are on the straight and narrow…the devout believers who never question their faith? You know, the saints of this world. Simple. They’re just too good. They would never compromise their ethical standards. The end would never justify the means. What if they had to lie, cheat, steal, or even kill to defeat the forces of evil? Get the picture? Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, I don’t have those scruples. I can keep my eye on the big picture, and maybe even enrich myself along the way. I was born for the role. I just didn’t know it.

I always knew we were not your average family. Shit. We’re the progeny of the infamous eighteenth-century burglar and escape artist Jack Sheppard. After “the lad” was executed at Tyburn, his girlfriend, Edgeware Beth, was transported to the colonies, where she gave birth to his son. The notoriety of the father necessitated the subtle name change to Sheppard Jackson…son of Jack. My father, grandfather, great-grandfather…you get the picture…were all saddled with the same name. Lacking creativity when it came to names, the Jacksons were innovative in other ways, and that’s probably the kindest way of saying it. My grandfather was not only an art historian and decorated officer in World War II, but also a CIA agent, black marketeer, and perhaps worst of all, an antiquities dealer. My dad? Forget about it. As for me, even though I studied classics at Columbia, gaining fluency in Latin and ancient Greek, I opted for the hedge fund world. It was not the pursuit of knowledge that got my adrenalin flowing. It was the quest to accrue wealth by taking risk. Let’s just say I embraced the gray areas a mite too enthusiastically and leave it at that.