Quicksilver

In 1713 Massachusetts, the alchemist Enoch Root summons Daniel Waterhouse. That frame sets off flashbacks tracing Daniel's life from 1661: his friendship with Isaac Newton, his place in the Royal Society, and his slow pull into English politics.

A second thread follows Jack Shaftoe, called the King of the Vagabonds. He starts in the slums of London, fights at the Battle of Vienna and travels on across Europe.

Eliza, a former harem slave, becomes a French countess, an investor and a spy. Her path runs through the finance of Amsterdam and the court of Louis XIV.

This is historical fiction on a very large scale, opening the Baroque Cycle and published in 2003. Three internal books divide it: Quicksilver, The King of the Vagabonds and Odalisque. The action crosses England, France, the Dutch Republic and German lands, and real figures such as Leibniz, Huygens and Charles II share the pages with invented characters.

Reading it means settling into a dense, digressive pace, with science, money and codes at the centre. It runs to roughly 900 pages, won the 2004 Arthur C. Clarke Award, and continues in The Confusion and The System of the World.