Saint's Blood


Book Description

'High energy, highly unique, swashbuckling-cop-epic-noir story. Buy it. BUY IT NOW' Sam Sykes The Greatcoats are back - and this time it's personal. How do you kill a Saint? Falcio, Brasti and Kest are about to find out, as someone is doing just that, and they've started with a friend. The Dukes were already looking for ways to weasel out of their promise to put Aline on her father's throne - but with Saints turning up dead, and Church Inquistitors pushing for control - rumours are spreading that the Gods themselves oppose her ascension. The only way Falcio can stop the country turning into a vicious theocracy is to find and stop the Saint-killer - but his only clue is the iron mask encasing the head of the Saint of Mercy, which prevents her from speaking. And even if he can find the murderer, he will still have to face them in battle - and this may be a duel that no swordsman, no matter how skilled, can win.




Blood of Saints


Book Description

"With its raw and vividly drawn characters, this thrill-a-minute adrenaline ride will keep Donald Westlake readers on the edge of their seats."—Library Journal He wants a miracle And he won't stop killing until he gets one Deep in the mountains of Montana, former Homicide inspector Sabrina Vaughn has found the kind of peace she's always dreamed of. And with Michael O'Shea, she's found the kind of love she never thought possible. Together, even under the constant threat of faraway adversaries, they've managed to build the kind of idyllic life they've both longed for. But a life this safe was never meant to last. When twenty-year-old forensic evidence connects her to a string of recent murders, Sabrina must leave her new life behind and return to the place she was brutally raped and tortured in order to search for a killer who's as cunning as any she's ever encountered. Praise for the Sabrina Vaughn novels: "Edge-of-the-seat plotting will keep readers' attention late into the night."—Library Journal "Reads like the transcript of a breathlessly bloody computer game."—Publishers Weekly "Maegan Beaumont's third novel in the impeccable Sabrina Vaughn series delights the reader with more intricately developed plots, higher stakes, and unlikely criminals that astonish by executing twist after unforeseen twist."—Crimespree Magazine Named a Best Debut of 2013 bySuspense Magazine (Carved in Darkness) " Prepare to be overwhelmed by the tension and moodiness that permeates this edgy thriller. Beaumont's ability to keep the twists coming even when the answer seems obvious is quite potent."—Library Journal (starred review) and Debut of the Month "Pulse-pounding terror, graphic violence, and a loathsome killer."—Kirkus Reviews "Beaumont knows how to keep you on the edge of your seat...Buckle up for the ride of a lifetime."—Suspense Magazine "Maegan Beaumont might be new to thriller scene, but her debut thriller, Carved in Darkness, promises to be the first in a long line of novels. Be warned, however, this novel isn't for those who jump a mile every time they hear something go bump in the night. But for anyone who's ever dreamed about enacting a just revenge, this book is for you. Beaumont knows how to cook up and serve a dish called revenge, but she doesn't serve it cold. She serves it sizzling hot."—Vincent Zandri, bestselling author of The Remains and Murder by Moonlight




Knight's Shadow


Book Description

Following his beloved debut, Traitor's Blade, Sebastien de Castell returns with volume two of his fast-paced fantasy adventure series, inspired by the swashbuckling action and witty banter of The Three Musketeers. Knight's Shadow continues the series with a thrilling and dark tale of heroism and betrayal in a country crushed under the weight of its rulers' corruption. A few days after the horrifying murder of a duke and his family, Falcio val Mond, swordsman and First Cantor of the Greatcoats, begins a deadly pursuit to capture the killer. But Falcio soon discovers his own life is in mortal danger from a poison administered as a final act of revenge by one of his deadliest enemies. As chaos and civil war begin to overtake the country, Falcio has precious little time left to stop those determined to destroy his homeland.




Traitor's Blade


Book Description

With swashbuckling action that recalls Dumas's Three Musketeers, Sebastien de Castell has created a dynamic new fantasy series. In Traitor's Blade, a disgraced swordsman struggles to redeem himself by protecting a young girl caught in the web of a royal conspiracy. The King is dead, the Greatcoats have been disbanded, and Falcio Val Mond and his fellow magistrates Kest and Brasti have been reduced to working as bodyguards for a nobleman who refuses to pay them. Things could be worse, of course. Their employer could be lying dead on the floor while they are forced to watch the killer plant evidence framing them for the murder. Oh wait, that's exactly what's happening. Now a royal conspiracy is about to unfold in the most corrupt city in the world. A carefully orchestrated series of murders that began with the overthrow of an idealistic young king will end with the death of an orphaned girl and the ruin of everything that Falcio, Kest, and Brasti have fought for. But if the trio want to foil the conspiracy, save the girl, and reunite the Greatcoats, they'll have to do it with nothing but the tattered coats on their backs and the swords in their hands, because these days every noble is a tyrant, every knight is a thug, and the only thing you can really trust is a traitor's blade.




A Dowry of Blood


Book Description

THE DARK FANTASY BOOKTOK BLOCKBUSTER! In this dark, fantasy sensation, S. T. Gibson spins the gothic, seductive tale of Dracula's first bride, Constanta. This is my last love letter to you, though some would call it a confession. . . Saved from the brink of death by a mysterious stranger, Constanta is transformed from a medieval peasant into a bride fit for an undying king. But when Dracula draws a cunning aristocrat and a starving artist into his web of passion and deceit, Constanta realizes that her beloved is capable of terrible things. Finding comfort in the arms of her rival consorts, she begins to unravel their husband's dark secrets. With the lives of everyone she loves on the line, Constanta will have to choose between her own freedom and her love for her husband. But bonds forged by blood can only be broken by death. "A dizzying nightmare of a romance that will leave you aching, angry and ultimately hopeful." --Hannah Whitten, New York Times bestselling author of For the Wolf




Blood on a Saint


Book Description

In the seventh book of the deftly written Collins-Burke Mystery series, Father Brennan Burke’s patience is pushed to the limit when a young woman announces to the world that the Virgin Mary has appeared to her in the churchyard, and hordes of pilgrims, souvenir hawkers, and reporters converge on the scene. But, as unwelcome as these guests may be, they pale in comparison to yet another aggravation in Father Burke’s life, a controversial talk show host who clashes with Burke upon arriving in town. Events take a darker turn when a body is found at the apparition site, and the talk show host is picked up for the murder. There is enough aggravation to go around, as Monty Collins learns when he takes on the loud-mouthed TV man as a client. Monty and Brennan both have a stake in uncovering the truth about the murder, and they both learn disturbing things about the accused man and other suspects in the case. Neither man can talk to the other about what he has learned, however, due to solicitor–client confidentiality on one side, the seal of the confessional on the other.




By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed


Book Description

The Catholic Church has in recent decades been associated with political efforts to eliminate the death penalty. It was not always so. This timely work reviews and explains the Catholic Tradition regarding the death penalty, demonstrating that it is not inherently evil and that it can be reserved as a just form of punishment in certain cases. Drawing upon a wealth of philosophical, scriptural, theological, and social scientific arguments, the authors explain the perennial teaching of the Church that capital punishment can in principle be legitimate—not only to protect society from immediate physical danger, but also to administer retributive justice and to deter capital crimes. The authors also show how some recent statements of Church leaders in opposition to the death penalty are prudential judgments rather than dogma. They reaffirm that Catholics may, in good conscience, disagree about the application of the death penalty. Some arguments against the death penalty falsely suggest that there has been a rupture in the Church's traditional teaching and thereby inadvertently cast doubt on the reliability of the Magisterium. Yet, as the authors demonstrate, the Church's traditional teaching is a safeguard to society, because the just use of the death penalty can be used to protect the lives of the innocent, inculcate a horror of murder, and affirm the dignity of human beings as free and rational creatures who must be held responsible for their actions. By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed challenges contemporary Catholics to engage with Scripture, Tradition, natural law, and the actual social scientific evidence in order to undertake a thoughtful analysis of the current debate about the death penalty.




Blood in the Fields


Book Description

On March 24, 1980, a sniper shot and killed Archbishop Óscar Romero as he celebrated mass. Today, nearly four decades after his death, the world continues to wrestle with the meaning of his witness. Blood in the Fields: Óscar Romero, Catholic Social Teaching, and Land Reform treats Romero’s role in one of the central conflicts that seized El Salvador during his time as archbishop and that plunged the country into civil war immediately after his death: the conflict over the concentration of agricultural land and the exclusion of the majority from access to land to farm. Drawing extensively on historical and archival sources, Blood in the Fields examines how and why Romero advocated for justice in the distribution of land, and the cost he faced in doing so. In contrast to his critics, who understood Romero’s calls for land reform as a communist-inspired assault on private property, Blood in the Fields shows how Romero relied upon what Catholic Social Teaching calls the common destination of created goods, drawing out its implications for what property is and what possessing it entails. For Romero, the pursuit of land reform became part of a more comprehensive politics of common use, prioritizing access of all peoples to God’s gift of creation. In this way, Blood in the Fields reveals how close consideration of this conflict over land opened up into a much more expansive moral and theological landscape, in which the struggle for justice in the distribution of land also became a struggle over what it meant to be human, to live in society with others, and even to be a follower of Christ. Understanding this conflict and its theological stakes helps clarify the meaning of Romero’s witness and the way God’s work to restore creation in Christ is cruciform.




Who Was the Mother of Harlots?: Unlocking the Key to Revelation


Book Description

Babylon in Revelation, is a key to proper understanding of "the end times." She is described as "the mother of harlots." Most commentators ignore the OT marriage covenant language of the term "harlot." It is assumed that a "harlot" was simply an immoral woman. Not so! As Temple effectively shows, in scripture, a harlot was a wife who had become unfaithful. This has tremendous implications for the dating and understanding of Revelation. Temple does a marvelous job of documenting the temporal setting, the language of marriage covenant and thus, the proper identity of the harlot city Babylon. This is a tremendously important book that you definitely want in your library!




Catholic Cults and Devotions


Book Description

Imagine a heart which has been ripped from a man's body, wrapped with thorns, pierced with a knife, and then placed on the man's chest; or a group of people who believe that wearing a small rectangle of wool next to their skin ensures that they will go to heaven - as long as it is brown wool and worn continuously. Although psychoanalysts have long investigated similar ideas and beliefs, they have ignored popular Catholicism, even though behaviour such as this occurs over and over again in the history of Catholic cults and devotions.