A novel of faith and self-discovery follows three women--all of whom join an order of nuns, and then leave--as they each embark on extraordinary journeys to discover their true place in the world.

In 1992, celebrated novelist Ann Patchett launched her remarkable career with the publication of her debut novel, The Patron Saint of Liars. On this 25th anniversary, read the best-selling book that is "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...

"Sister Holiday is back with a newly minted PI apprentice certificate, a twisty mystery to solve, and something to prove. Tattooed from her neck to her toes, and sporting a gold tooth as sharp as her wisecracks, Sister Holiday struggles to stay on the righteous path. Never one to make things easy for herself, she's committed to taking her permanent vows with the Sisters of the Sublime Blood and joining former fire inspector Magnolia Riveaux's latest...

Five nuns confront nature--physical and human--in a remote Himalayan convent in this bestselling novel that "bears comparison with A Passage to India " (Arthur Koestler). Under the guidance of Sister Clodagh, the youngest Mother Superior in the history of their order, five European Sisters of the Servants of Mary leave their monastery in Darjeeling, India, and make their way to remote Mopu in the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains. There, in the...

""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...

"Never underestimate the power of a group of women. Fierce, thoughtful and dramatic--this is a story of true courage." --Susan Wiggs, New York Times bestselling author She would stop at nothing to protect the women under her care. Inside a century-old row house in Brooklyn, renegade Sister Evelyn and her fellow nuns preside over a safe haven for the abused and abandoned. Gruff and indomitable on the surface, warm and wry underneath, little daunts...

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.

1798, France. Nuns move along the dark corridors of a Versailles hospital where the young Sister Perpetué has been tasked with sitting with the patient who must always be watched. The man, gaunt, with his sallow skin and distended belly, is dying: they say he ate a golden fork, and that it's killing him from the inside. But that's not all--he is rumored to have done monstrous things in his attempts to sate an insatiable appetite... an appetite they...

Katie Maguire never thought Ireland's nuns would need her protection...In a nursing home on the outskirts of Cork, an elderly nun has been suffocated in her sleep. It looks like a mercy-killing--until another sister from the same convent is found floating in the Glashaboy river. The nuns were good women, doing God's work. Why would anyone want to kill them? But then a child's skull is unearthed in the garden of the nuns' convent, and DS Katie Maguire...

A most inconvenient marriage...Forced by bankruptcy and scandal into exile in France, Lord Waverly expects never to return to his homeland until, staggering home from a gambling hell in the wee hours of the morning, he encounters a young novice escaping from a convent. When she asks him to escort her to England, promising him that her English grandfather will reward him handsomely for her safe conveyance, Waverly reluctantly agrees.Alas, he soon realizes...