Free Republic

LANGLEY, Va. - Part of the new Dan Brown novel is based on a local mystery. In the introduction to his new best-selling novel, "The Lost Symbol," author Dan Brown lists the following: "In 1991, a document was locked in the safe of the director of the CIA. The document is still there today, its cryptic text includes references to an unknown location underground. The document ... includes the phrase, 'It's buried out there somewhere.'" Brown says the 20-year-old document contains the answers to a 20-year-old mystery. WTOP's National Security Correspondent J.J. Green investigated the claim, and found out it's...

From a September 2006 article featured on the Our Sunday Visitor website:No pope has ever been a Mason. The Catholic Church has warily monitored Freemasonry from the time it penetrated Europe. In 1738, Pope Clement XII condemned the Craft for its dependence on mere natural virtue while ignoring Christ's unique role as Savior. He also denounced the rash oaths it demanded of members to protect trivial Lodge secrets. Catholics who joined the Masons were excommunicated, with reconciliation reserved to the pope. This decree had little effect, however, because it wasn't published in every land, nor was it always taken seriously...

SAN FRANCISCO: The latest novel from “Da Vinci Code” author Dan Brown, “The Lost Symbol,” broke one-day sales records, its publisher and booksellers said. Readers snapped up over one million hardcover copies across the US, Canada and the UK after it was released on Tuesday, said publisher Knopf Doubleday, a division of Random House. “We are seeing historic, record-breaking sales across all types of our accounts in North America for ‘The Lost Symbol,” said Sonny Mehta, editor-in-chief of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Random House. Amazon.com, the world’s largest online retailer, called the book its bestselling first-day adult...

Dan Brown has done it again. In 2003, "The Da Vinci" code author released the must-read novel of the year. Six years later, his sequel "The Lost Symbol" sold more than one million copies in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. on its first day, shattering sales records in adult fiction books and forcing the publisher to rush-print an additional 600,000 copies to meet the demand.

The real mystery surrounding Dan Brown's sequel to The Da Vinci Code doesn't involve Catholic cults or revisionist Christianity. It's whether the return of Robert Langdon can help publishers drag themselves up from one of the lower circles of economic hell. The Lost Symbol goes on sale Tuesday, six years after The Da Vinci Code sold 80 million copies in 51 languages, and booksellers and publishers are hoping its appearance will inspire Brown's fans to pick up a little something extra. Maybe the new Edward Kennedy memoir True Compass, which goes on sale Monday. ``We're hoping the book drives people...