The Medieval Murderers are a group of British historical crime fiction writers (in this case, Karen Maitland, Susanna Gregory, Bernard Knight, Philip Gooden, Ian Morson and Simon Beaufort) who start with a particular object and take it through its criminal history from, say, the Dark Ages to the present. In The Sacred Stone, that object is a curiously shaped meteorite, a small but heavy rock that sometimes looks like a ship and sometimes looks like a bird in flight. It falls from the sky onto a field in Greenland in 1067, and it both cures and curses the Viking settlement living nearby. As time goes on, it sometimes heals and sometimes destroys - but always, there are people prepared to murder to possess it....In this entry to the series, we range from the 11th Century to the 21st, sticking mostly in the Middle Ages with stories set in 1101, 1236, 1241, 1272, 1606 and 2010 respectively; most of the stories feature the authors' series characters (actor Nick Revill in Philip Gooden's story, Oxford don William Falconer in Ian Morson's tale set in 1272, and so on). Karen Maitland is new to the series and to me as a reader; her story deals with Jews in 13th Century England, but I don't know if any particular character is set up as a series personage. I find these volumes to be quite entertaining and this one is no exception. Not the type of book where you want to buy multiple copies for all your friends and relatives, but a pleasant way to while away an evening or three. Recommended. ( )