Poor Inspector Gallagher -- his premonition was right. Sister Mary Helen is once more in the middle of a homicide case. Not that she wants to be. No one would envy the poor nun, who finds herself holding a dying young woman -- shot to death in the street almost directly outside the Refuge for homeless women where Mary Helen volunteers. And even while she grieves over the loss of life, Mary Helen spots something odd about the victim. Although she is wearing near-rags, her skin is unblemished and healthy-looking. Her perfect teeth are white and unstained. She doesn't look like a woman whose life has been spent in poverty, in the streets. Mary Helen's feeling is borne out when she discovers that the dead woman was a Vice Department officer trying to find the people responsible for a neighborhood prostitute ring. And in spite of her own conscience warning her, the old nun feels that since the murder happened in front of HER refuge, it is her duty to find the officer's...

Sister Mary Helen is in luck, depending on how you look at it. She and Sister Eileen are in Ireland to attend the weeklong Oyster Festival in the little village of Ballyclarin. They make their first stop at a central oasis of food and drink called the Monks' Table. Mary Helen overhears a woman saying to the man with her, "I am surprised someone hasn't killed you already." But Eileen assures her that it's only a way of speaking, and Mary Helen is relieved---until the next night, when she finds the same man in the pub's ladies' room, murdered.Mary Helen's reputation for sleuthing follows her across the Atlantic, and the Irish police warn her not to get involved. She has every intention of leaving this case in the hands of the authorities, but sometimes Fate will just not listen to reason.Fans of this delightful nun, a detective in spite of herself, will be certain to enjoy accompanying her on this latest trip, the eleventh entry in this continuingly popular...

Sister Mary Helen and her Irish friend, Sister Eileen, need some R&R away from the pressures of their inner city vocation. A week at the idyllic St. Colette's Retreat House, snuggled amid towering redwoods 65 miles from San Francisco, sounds like heaven. Unfortunately the muddled sisters mistakenly arrive a week too early and find that St. Colette's is hosting a convention of hard drinking, high spirited priests. And when the serenity is further shattered by the murder of a former seminary student, suspicion falls on the holy fathers. But Sister Mary Helen has another theory about the perpetrator, and in her inimitable way she intends to uncover the deadly secrets and passions that the flesh is heir to...

Sister Mary Helen is sinfully good at snooping through the San Francisco fog. Now a fellow OWL (Older Woman's League) member has disappeared. The police believe Erma Duran simply flew the coop, but Sister feels a Higher Authority pushing her to investigate. A gold medal entangled in Erma's bedsprings and a cryptic clue to a Byzantine madonna deepens the mystery. By the time Police Inspector Kate Murphy joins the hunt, Sister's good intentions have already paved her way straight to the Mission District--and a hellish encounter with sudden death.

Vivacious and outgoing, Lisa Springer was the most unlikely member of the free pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, the birthplace of Christianity in Spain. And Sister Mary Helen soon had reason to suspect the auburn-haired knockout knew the other members of the tour group--and some of their ugliest secrets--all too well. So when Lisa was discovered strangled to death in a saint's crypt, Sister Mary faced no end of likely suspects-from Lisa's dangerously disaffected "best friend" to the group's charming, unreliable guide to the mild-mannered professor with a relentlessly snobbish wife. And when Sister Mary Helen becomes the target of a number of frightening "accidents," she and Sister Eileen must race to uncover Lisa's past and expose a clever killer hellbent on prematurely sending one sleuthing nun to her heavenly reward.