Sister Evangeline was just a girl when her father entrusted her to the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in upstate New York. Now, twenty-three, her discovery of a 1943 letter from philanthropist Abigail Rockefeller to the late Mother Superior of Saint Rose Convent plunges Evangeline into a secret history that stretches back a thousand years: an ancient conflict between the Society of Angelologists and the monstrously beautiful descendants...

When the body of young novice Sister Camille is found garroted in St. Marguerite's cathedral, New Orleans Detectives Bentz and Montoya are called in. Bentz is sure Father O'Toole is their man. But there are other suspects, too, including a ruthless murderer believed to have died years ago.

THE PLAY'S THE THING, TO CATCH THE CONSCIENCE OF A KILLER . . . The Christmas season brings strange guests to the medieval nunnery of St. Frideswide's when a troupe of penniless players comes knocking at the gate. They bear with them the badly mangled body of a villager, swearing they found the drunken fool lying in a ditch. But Meg, the victim's wife and a scullery maid of the cloister, thinks there are far fouler deeds afoot. As the players rehearse...

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.

Mark Salzman received critical acclaim for Iron & Silk, his personal account of two years spent in China. In Lying Awake, he creates a fascinating spiritual landscape that lies behind the walls of a monastery. Readers around the world praise the beauty and originality of this novel. Sister John has devoted her life to serving God. For almost 30 years she has lived in a Carmelite monastery near Los Angeles. There, she experiences religious visions...