Brad Meltzer's Decoded (2010 - 2012)

The team gets to the bottom--literally--of a mystery concerning the cornerstones of our democracy. Laid by the ultra secretive Freemasons, this landmark piece of stone vanished. The search for the White House cornerstone has been on for over 200 years, everyone from Harry Truman to Barbara Bush have looked for it. Is it a coincidence...or is there a secret conspiracy tied to these stones and the buildings they were meant to support?

Best-selling author Brad Meltzer and his team thought they knew what the Statue of Liberty stood for. But now they learn that America's most powerful icon of freedom might actually be loaded with secret symbols put there by a sinister group bent on world domination. They investigate claims that the Illuminati, a secret European society loosely affiliated with the freemasons, turned every inch of the statue into a coded message, from the torch Liberty holds high, to the rays emanating from the crown, even to the precise height of the statue itself. Things get even stranger when a highly regarded numerologist shows the team why he believes the statue is really a monument to the all-powerful number 7. As they evaluate these unsettling claims, Brad and the team are forced to reconsider whether one of America's most enduring symbols is really who she appears to be.

Best-selling author Brad Meltzer and his Decoded team examine claims that John Wilkes Booth actually escaped to freedom after murdering President Abraham Lincoln in 1865. The "official" version of events says federal agents cornered Booth and killed him just days after the assassination. But Brad and the team uncover glaring inconsistencies in that 150-year-old account: Why did the authorities hide Booth's body from public view? Why was Booth autopsy's conducted in complete secrecy in the cramped confines of an ironclad gunboat? Searching for answers to these and other troubling questions, the team finds startling evidence that strongly suggests Booth may indeed have lived into old age without ever facing punishment for his crime.

Best-selling author Brad Meltzer and his team dig into one of the Civil War's most enduring legends: that millions of dollars' worth of missing gold and silver from the Confederate treasury are still buried in secret hiding places across America. According the legend, the only way to find that buried treasure is to decode cryptic signs and symbols left behind by a shadowy Confederate group known as the Knights of the Golden Circle. Brad and the Decoded team join veteran treasure hunter Bob Brewer, whose lifetime effort to understand the KGC's secret code paid off when he uncovered a small fortune in buried Confederate coins. Bob soon shows just how well he understands those codes as he and the team follow KGC clues to the location of another possible treasure trove.

Best-selling author Brad Meltzer and the team jump at the chance to take on one of the FBI's most puzzling unsolved crimes: the 1971 disappearance of airline skyjacker D.B. Cooper, who bailed out of a jetliner at ten thousand feet over Washington state with two parachutes and two hundred thousand dollars in ransom money strapped to his body. Working closely with the former FBI agent who headed up the unsuccessful search for Cooper, Brad and the team examine new evidence that points to a former airline employee named Kenny Christiansen, whose own brother suspects he was actually the skyjacker who called himself D.B. Cooper. This sets up a climactic meeting between the Decoded team and Christensen's possible accomplice, the man who may have helped D.B. Cooper and his two hundred thousand dollar ransom vanish into thin air.

There has long been speculation that on December 21, 2012, the world as we know it will end. Some predict that we'll be wiped out by a natural disaster like a giant tidal wave, an Earth-wide earthquake or a tremendous volcanic eruption. Others believe that on that day in December, the Earth will collide with a mysterious "Planet X," causing magnetic pole shifts, gravitational reversals or a black hole so big that our solar system will simply disappear. What's more, believers say that this news is not really news at all; on the contrary, they argue, we have known about the coming apocalypse since the ancient Maya predicted and recorded it on their Long Count calendar more than 2,200 years ago.

What if the United States was saved by the most covert spy ring in US History, made up almost entirely of ordinary people? They were called: The Culper Spy Ring. This group of code-named spies worked stealthily to steal secrets from the British, giving the Americans a heads up on surprise attacks and enemy troop movements. The Decoded team will uncover if this small circle of shopkeepers, tavern owners and housewives may have played the most important role in defeating the British in the Revolutionary War more than 200 years ago.

Best-selling author Brad Meltzer and his team try to penetrate Bohemian Grove, one of America's most tightly guarded gatherings of the rich and powerful. The Decoded team converges on the group's hideaway in a northern California redwood forest to pursue rumors of ritual sacrifice and secret agreements that control the lives of everyday Americans. Brad soon finds out just how difficult it is to uncover Bohemian Grove's secrets. He knew sending the team into the Grove would be risky, but he never expected they'd be calling him for bail money.

Best-selling author Brad Meltzer and the team search for the true meaning of the mysterious Georgia Guidestones. Often called America's Stonehenge, this granite monument is located on a remote hilltop outside Atlanta. Brad and the team examine the multilingual messages carved into the stones for any clues to the monument's anonymous creator, who's known only by the pseudonym -- J.C. Christian. The Decoded team checks out rumors that the Guidestones are really the work of a secretive religious sect called the Rosicrucians, who've been accused of practicing alchemy and mind control.