Expecting to cover zoning meetings and school plays, Paul Tomm signs on as a cub reporter with a small-town paper near his Connecticut alma mater. When Jaan Puhapaev, a professor doing his research on the ancient art of alchemy, dies under suspicious circumstances, Paul is called back to the campus to write an obituary. But Puhapaev had no family or friends, and the only person who seems to have known anything about him is the beautiful next-door neighbor, Hannah Rowe. When the coroner working on Puhapaev's autopsy is killed, Tomm teams up with two detectives and Hannah, with whom he has fallen in love, to discover what happened to both men. But the more he gets acquainted with the professor's story, the stranger it gets. What did Puhapaev know about the fourteen charmed, cursed talismans that could turn not only base metal into gold but also old age into youth?