Waiting On Wednesday : The Astronomer by Lawrence Goldstone

This is my very first installment of Waiting On Wednesday hosted by Jill @ Breaking the Spine. I really like this meme but I always hesitated to join because I just can't come up with upcoming releases every week. However, I decided that it doesn't really have to be every  week but only when there is a book coming up that I am extra excited about. And I have just learned of such a book.

The Astronomer by Lawrence Goldstone is coming in May, 2010 from Walker Books.

Here's what the publisher says:

Set against the religious intolerance of sixteenth-century France, an intricate suspense thriller
revolving around a plot to kill Nicolaus Copernicus.

1534, Paris. A student at the Catholic Collège de Montaigu, serving as a courier for the Inquisition, is
murdered by members of an extreme Lutheran sect for the packet of letters he is carrying. His friend
and fellow classmate Amaury de Faverges—the illegitimate son of the Duke of Savoy and an expert in
astronomy and natural science—is recruited as his replacement and promised a decree of legitimacy if he
can uncover the secret that threatens to overturn Catholicism and the reign of François I.

Working undercover, Amaury journeys south to the liberal court of the king’s sister, Marguerite of Navarre,
the alleged heart of the conspiracy. The deeper he probes, the more Amaury is forced to confront his own
religious doubts; and when he discovers a copy of Copernicus’s shocking manuscript showing the sun at
the center of the universe, he knows the path he must follow.

Replete with characters and events from history—from the iconoclastic Rabelais to the burning of heretics
in Paris to preacher John Calvin and Copernicus himself—The Astronomer is a powerful novel of love and
betrayal, and a thrilling portrait of what might well have happened at a hinge point in history when science
and ancient religious belief collided.

I am especially looking forward to this book because it involves Nicolaus Copernicus, "my homeboy", a very famous historical figure from my native country of Poland.