""A time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be." In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there's only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates' bullying. But before she ends it all, Nao first plans to document the life of her great grandmother, a Buddhist nun who's lived more than a century. A diary is Nao's only solace--and will touch lives in ways she...

"The sun beamed down on Melissa Henderson's shining dark hair, pinned up on her head in a loose knot, as sweat ran down her face, and the muscles in her long, lithe arms were taut with effort as she worked. She was lost in concentration, sanding a door of the house in the Berkshire Mountains in Massachusetts that had been her salvation. She had bought it four years before. It had been weather-beaten, shabby and in serious need of repair when she found...

Not even the icy temperatures of a New England winter can match the bone-chilling scene of carnage at the chapel of Our Lady of Divine Light. Within the cloistered convent lie two nuns–one dead, one critically injured–victims of an unspeakably savage attacker. The brutal crime appears to be without motive, but medical examiner Maura Isles’s autopsy of the dead woman yields a shocking surprise: Twenty-year-old Sister Camille gave birth before...

A New York Times Notable Book

Acclaimed author Ann Patchett's debut novel, hailed as "beautifully written . . . a first novel that second- and third-time novelists would envy for its grace, insight, and compassion" (Boston Herald)

St. Elizabeth's, a home for unwed mothers in Habit, Kentucky, usually harbors its residents for only a little while. Not so Rose Clinton, a beautiful, mysterious woman who

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When Maria Testa, better known to Brunetti as the nun who once had cared for his mother, turns up at the Commissario's door, after leaving her convent following the suspicious deaths of five patients, Brunetti launches a personal investigation into the situation.

"Sister Eve always says God moves in mysterious ways. And Eve adores a good mystery, especially a murder. A member of the Benedictine Order in Pecos, New Mexico, Sister Evangeline has been feeling disconnected and a bit uncertain about her calling. She's not thrilled when she must return home to Madrid, New Mexico, to care for her testy, ailing father, but she's also invigorated to take on some new challenges. Retired Police Captain Jackson Divine...

When Emma Sharpe is summoned to a convent on the Maine coast, it's partly for her art crimes work with the FBI, partly because of her past with the religious order. At issue is a mysterious painting depicting scenes of Irish lore and Viking legends, and her family's connection to the work. But when the nun who contacted her is murdered, it seems legend is becoming deadly reality.

At Christmas time, a nun agrees to donate to Rockefeller Center a fir tree which has been her best friend since the time she arrived at her convent as a young orphan.

In this highly personal account of an ex-nun's transition from a cloistered, disciplined life, to a life in the world, confronting her human feelings and making her own decisions, Karen Armstrong discusses frankly and with humor her process of coping with the shifting values and lifestyles of the secular world. It is a revealing account of her discovery that the spiritual vocation can be an ever-changing journey into life. She is author of Beginning...

Ex-nun Christine Bennett decides to investigate when Willard Platt, having faked his own murder as an April fool stunt for the high school drama club, turns up dead the next day, leaving his family in turmoil.