A sparkling addition to the multiple”New York Times”best-sellingRing of Fire alternate historyseries created by Eric Flint An alchemist of the 17th centuryconfrontsmodern science with often amusing resultsPhillip Theophrastus Gribbleflotz the world’s greatest alchemist and a great-grandson of Paracelsus and a Bombast on his mother’s side was a man history had forgotten But when the town of Grantville was transported by a cosmic accident from modern West Virginia to central Germany in the early seventeenth century he got a second chance at fame and fortune The world’s greatest alchemist does not make household goods But with suitable enticements Gribbleflotz is persuaded to make baking soda and then baking powder so that the time-displaced Americans can continue to enjoy such culinary classics as biscuits andgravy Applying his superb grasp of the principles of alchemy to the muddled and confused notions the Americans have concerning what they call chemistry Gribbleflotz leaves obscurity behindIn his relentless search for a way to invigorate the “quinta essential” of the human humors Gribbleflotz plays a central role in jump-starting the seventeenth century s new chemical and marital aids industries and pioneering such critical fields of human knowledge as pyramidology and aura imaging