Colorado Parks & Wildlife Research Library

First published in 1911, The Innocence of Father Brown is a series of stories involving one of the greatest characters in the history of detective fiction, G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown. A Roman Catholic priest, Father Brown has an uncanny insight to human evil. In contrast with the aristocratic arch-villains of the Sherlock Holmes stories, Father Brown solves mysteries involving local murders by small town crooks, narrowing the suspect list down...

Lonely and brooding, Dave has lost his moorings. His wife, Bootsy, is dead, and his daughter is away at college. When a parish priest asks him to help a family in need, Dave discovers that they hold the clues to a decades-old mystery: the disappearance of blues legend Junior Crudup while he was serving time in Angola prison. Soon, Dave's investigation leads him to confront New Iberia's movers and shakers, and a seductive woman who has been his nemesis...

"Lilac Nielsen must learn to balance her new courtship with the young reverend and her pursuit of another dream-the publication of her artwork in a New York newspaper. But when a family crisis back in Ohio shakes the Nielsen sisters, can they continue the new life they've begun in Nebraska? And will Lilac be prepared for what God has in store for her future?"-- Lilac Nielsen's dream has come true: Reverend Ethan Pritchard has finally noticed her....

"It's December 23, 1971, and the Hildebrandt family is at a crossroads. The patriarch, Russ, the associate pastor of a suburban Chicago church, is poised to break free of a marriage he finds joyless--unless his brilliant and unstable wife, Marion, breaks free of it first. Their eldest child, Clem, is coming home from college afire with moral absolutism, having taken an action that will shatter his father. Clem's sister, Becky, long the social queen...

Follows the residents of the small town of Harmony, including pastor Sam Gardner, through various crises of faith and relationship.

Young Tess Durbeyfield attempts to restore her family's fortunes by claiming their connection with the aristocratic d'Urbervilles. But Alec d'Urberville is a rich wastrel who seduces her and makes her life miserable. When Tess meets Angel Clare, she is offered true love and happiness, but her past catches up with her and she faces an agonizing moral choice...

Father Herman Hoffman, a gifted and innocent young priest who, during his first parish appointment, gets swept up in the "Crisis" after witnessing child abuse in the parish rectory. When he reports the abuse, he is rebuffed by the archbishop and, vilified for denouncing a priest who has been "cleared" by the police, learns the harsh fate of the whistleblower in the contemporary Catholic Church. Later, forced to testify in a court hearing, Father Hoffman...

Father Lar and his new, young assistant, Father Jamie, discover a sinister, secret organization called "Corpus Christi," a cult practicing evil clandestine rites, at work in their wealthy suburban parish.

"Pastor's assistant" is not a phrase that springs to mind when Noah Kincaid meets brassy, beautiful Alicia Baldwin. With her colorful clothes and even more colorful past, Alicia needs a respectable job so she can regain custody of her children. Noah can't help but admire her spunk and determination, and she may just be the breath of fresh air he needs.

Nell's cowboy: Nell Bishop, widowed mother of two children, is turning her property into a dude ranch. And one of her first guests is Travis Grant, an Easterner known for his books about the West. Her kids are crazy about him✹✹✹✹✹✹✹✹✹✹✹✹✹✹✹✹✹✹✹✹✹✹✹ -- Lone star baby: Wade McMillen might be a minister, but he's also a man. An unmarried and very attractive one. So is it as a man that he responds to Amy...