When the renowned choir director is murdered, the lock on the monastery's massive wooden door is drawn back to admit Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir of the Surete du Quebec. There they discover disquiet beneath the silence, discord in the apparent harmony.

On the Earth-like planet, Arbre, scientists, philosophers and mathematicians are called upon to leave their sanctuary when a extraterrestrial catastrophe threatens.

ESSENE is about daily life in a Benedictine monastery and the resolution of conflict between personal needs and the institutional and organizational priorities of the community. In the Order, where the focus of life is the relationship of individual work and worship to the community as a whole, the brethren must cope with the same issues that arise in any community: rules, work, worship, values, love, and play.

This riveting debut set in 1534 England secured C. J. Sansom's place "among the most distinguished of modern historical novelists" (P. D. James). When Henry VIII's emissary is beheaded at an English monastery, hunchbacked lawyer Matthew Shardlake is dispatched to solve the crime. But as he uncovers a cesspool of sin, three more murders occur-and Matthew may be the next target.

The Aegean Sea laps the shores of the Holy Mountain of Athos, a self-governing monastic republic on a peninsula in Northern Greece. Twenty ruling monasteries comprise the republic, one of those is the monastery of St Panteleimon, where services are conducted in Slavonic. It has become known as the Russian monastery on Mt. Athos. St Panteleimon, fully restored in recent years, can accommodate up to 5,000 men, reflecting the scale of the settlement...