Crowley County Combined Library

The priest at a Catholic funeral mass brings the chalice to his lips and falls over dead. When Detective Lieutenant Eve Dallas confirms that the consecrated wine contains potassium cyanide, she's determined to find out who committed this unholy act.

Danny Hansen came to America with hopes of escaping haunted memories of a tragic war that took his mother's life. Now he's a priest, incensed by the powerful among us who manipulate the law for their own gain, uncaring of the shattered lives they leave behind. It is his duty to show them the error of their ways, even if he must put them, in the grave. Renee Gilmore is the frail and helpless victim of one such powerful man. Having escaped his clutches,...

Mistress of Dragons is the first volume in an epic fantasy trilogy entitled The Dragonvald. Here is a world where men and dragons coexist amid political intrigue and dark magic, where the uneasy balance of power between the two is on the verge of becoming undone, threatening to unleash waves of destruction that will pit humans against humans as well as dragons against men for the domination of the world. Humanity's very survival is at risk. The power...

Set against Iceland's stark landscape, Hannah Kent brings to vivid life the story of Agnes, who, charged with the brutal murder of her former master, is sent to an isolated farm to await execution. Horrified at the prospect of housing a convicted murderer, the family at first avoids Agnes. Only Tóti, a priest Agnes has mysteriously chosen to be her spiritual guardian, seeks to understand her. But as Agnes's death looms, the farmer's wife and their...

"1468. A young priest, Christopher Fairfax, arrives in a remote Exmoor village to conduct the funeral of his predecessor. The land around is strewn with ancient artifacts--coins, fragments of glass, human bones--which the old parson used to collect. Did his obsession with the past lead to his death? Fairfax becomes determined to discover the truth. Over the course of the next six days, everything he believes--about himself, his faith, and the history...

"In the vein of The Dry and Before the Fall, a town's dark secrets come to light in the aftermath of a young priest's unthinkable last act in this arresting and searing debut thriller. In Riversend, an isolated rural community afflicted by an endless drought, a young priest does the unthinkable, killing five parishioners before being taken down himself. A year later, accompanied by his own demons from war-time reporting, journalist Martin Scarsden...

When schools teaching magic are banned, Tyen, a teacher of mechanical magic, is left with no home or purpose and must decide how far he is willing to go to free a sorcerer imprisoned in a book, while Rielle's peaceful new life is shattered by a local war that leads to an extraordinary offer.

Pastor Jack McReady has secretly carried a torch for Daisy for two long years. But she's a member of his congregation, and she'll never see him as more than a trusted counselor. When Jack's best friend Noah catches wind that Daisy has joined an online dating site, he takes matters into his own hands and orchestrates a meet-cute of the most unconventional kind.

The 1950s was a boom time for the Catholic Church in America, with large families of devout members providing at least one son or daughter for a life of religious service. Boston was at the epicenter of this explosion, and Bill Manseau and Mary Doherty - two eager young parishioners from different towns - became part of a new breed of clergy, eschewing the comforts of homey parishes and choosing instead to minister to the inner-city poor. Peter Manseau's...

"In San Francisco's seamy Tenderloin district, a teenage street hustler has been murdered in a shelter for boys. And the dedicated priest who runs the struggling home stands accused. But despite damning evidence that he's a killer - and worse - Father Thomas Martin stands by his innocence. And attorney Peter Donley stands with him. For three years Donley has cut his legal teeth in his uncle's tiny, no-frills firm, where people come before profits....