Six Sister Agnes books have now been published, and Alison is currently working on a new novel.
SACRED HEARTS
The first Sister Agnes story.
Agnes Bourdillon is in London, having left an
enclosed order to join another, open order. She is living in a tiny bedsit and
working in a hostel for homeless young people. Then she hears that Hugo, her
ex-husband, has been charged with murdering his second wife
Philippa.
She finds herself drawn
back into his life, back to the lavish Gloucestershire home he shared with
Philippa, back to his spoilt, selfish behaviour, his potential for violence.
She finds herself caught up in the moneyed social circles he frequents, where
nobody is what they seem. But it is with the dispossessed, the homeless rural
youth, that she seeks out the truth about Philippa's murder. Because, despite
everything she knows about Hugo, she believes him to be
innocent.
"The debut appearance of
an appealing clerical detective..." -- Publishers
Weekly
"First-novelist Joseph
writes with such pointed authority..." -- Kirkus Reviews...
THE
HOUR OF OUR DEATH
The fragility of human existence is a familiar fact of
life for all who work in the London teaching hospital of St. Hughs, as Sister
Agnes, standing in as a hospital visitor, well knows. But when an assistant in
the Pharmacology department collapses at her desk, apparently from a drugs
overdose, it seems to Agnes that her sudden death is being handled with
indecent haste. Agnes's doubts are heightened when she meets Kathleen McAleer,
an elderly patient whose power of speech has been affected by a stroke, but who
manages to convey to Agnes that she saw a murder.
When Agnes discovers the hospital has managed to fake
the post-mortem results, she knows she owes it to the shadowy victim to find
out what lies behind her death. From the bleak tragedy of a lonely woman, Agnes
finds herself drawn into the subtle, bitter politics of the medical fraternity.
And when she meets handsome but sinister Alexander Jeffes, a portrait painter
who has been commissioned to paint the Professor of Surgery, she is caught up
in conflicts of her own.
This novel
touches on themes of representation, of the relationship between art and
medicine, of the body as a site for investigation.
"Art, passions and dark family dynamics feature in this
well-wrought second mystery by Alison Joseph." -- Publishers
Weekly
THE
QUICK AND THE DEAD
Agnes is working in the hostel for young homeless when
Sam -- one of their female residents, who had just turned sixteen -- runs away.
Agnes feels responsible because Sam's case team had been trying to return her
to her family. Furious with the authorities, Agnes tries to track her
down.
She finds Sam living at an
anti-road protest camp at the edge of Epping Forest, delighted with her new
home, her tree-top house and new friends. But only hours after Agnes arrives at
the camp, a body is found in the woods. It is Becky, one of Sam's friends, and
she has been brutally murdered.
Agnes's suspicions are further aroused when the man
claiming to be Sam's birth father reappears in her life, having been absent for
the last fourteen years, and tries to persuade her to come and live with him.
Agnes feels she must protect Sam from further danger. But who killed Becky? And
will they come back for Sam?
"Alison Joseph certainly knows how to spin a good yarn
and to keep several strands of it going at once.... She manages to interweave
her cosmic questioning deftly into the rest of the plot, so that Sister Agnes's
struggles are almost on a par with the rest of her investigations, and until
the last two pages, the outcome is in doubt." -- The Church
Times
"A novel of stylish assurance...
instilled with an urgent sense of the complexities of urban existence...." --
Birmingham Post
A
DARK AND SINFUL DEATH
Agnes has been sent by her order to Yorkshire, to teach
in their expensive convent boarding school. One night Agnes is called to the
art room, where she finds Joanna Baines, the art mistress, surrounded by black
paint and desecrated paintings. The next day a young man, Mark Snaith, is found
murdered on the moors, his face horribly mutilated.
The man Snaith worked for is William Baines, owner of
Allbright's mill, still one of the main employers in the area. When Agnes
visits him, he denies knowing Joanna Baines with a vehemence that astonishes
her - especially since she is certain he is lying.
"Set against the background of complex family
histories, this is a richly-woven tapestry of several stories that interconnect
in often unexpected ways. Thought provoking and packed with parallels to the
King Lear story, it explores grief, anger, madness and love." -- Manchester
Evening News
THE
DYING LIGHT
Agnes has never felt the need for a wimple to express
her spirituality. But her strength is tested by her secondment to Silworth, a
South London women's prison. She does, however, find the work compelling, as
she attempts to negotiate the network of bullies and victims, loyalties and
hatreds, prisoners and jailers, searching to understand the often violent
histories that lie behind each woman.
Then the father of Cally Fisher, one of the most
turbulent inmates, is shot dead... the chief suspect Cally's boyfriend. And --
reminded unnervingly of how she is losing her own mother, who is rapidly
retreating from reality in a French nursing home -- Agnes finds that she too
has become entangled in a dark world that stretches further than the prison
walls...
THE
NIGHT WATCH
Surely the whole point of golf is that it's difficult
to know where the ball will go. So it's highly unlikely that, when an errant
golf ball hits Matthias Kavanagh in the head causing a fatal riding accident,
someone actually intends to kill him. But Sister Agnes Bourdillon can't help
thinking that his death is the result of foul play, especially when she learns
that another rider was injured in a similar incident only days
before.
Reason tells Agnes she's
wrong, but as a nun she can't accept that the universe is governed by such
cruel randomness. Another death is enough to convince her that a killer is at
work. But, consumed by doubts and deserted by those she most depends upon,
she'll need to delve deep into her reserves of ingenuity and strength to
establish not only the truth about what she's sure is murder, but also the
foundations of her own beliefs.
