Aimée Thurlo

Sister Agatha is an extern nun -- the link between the cloistered sisters and the community -- for the Our Lady of Hope monastery in the small town of Bernalillo, New Mexico. Using the skills she developed as an investigative journalist before she heeded the calling to become a nun, Sister Agatha has become renowned -- sometimes even infamous -- for her crime-solving skills. Sister Agatha is being sorely tested. Our Lady of Hope monastery is about...

When the local diocese offers to pay for renovations to Our Lady of Hope monastery in exchange for housing a novice nun from a different order, the contemplative order becomes the target of violent threats after the arrival of the boisterous Sister Jo.

In the midst of local conflict over bringing a casino to the Navajo reservation, Ella Clah finds her life complicated by terrorists who are threatening the Navajos' local power plant and by the disappearance of her young daughter and the child's father.

"A construction crew found the first body. The cops found three more, in a cluster that lay on both sides of the border of the Navajo Reservation. Because some of the bodies were buried outside the Rez, Navajo Police Special Investigator Ella Clah and her team must work a delicate joint investigation with the New Mexico police. Identifying the dead isn't easy--some had been buried for years--and at first the cases look to be nothing but dead ends....

Faced with costly repairs to the cloistered Our Lady of Hope monastery, Sister Agatha, the local extern nun with a talent for detection, accepts an offer by the ailing and wealthy John Gutierrez to search for his estranged niece, who is believed to be inthe area.

Shocked by the murder of a young Navajo woman, Navajo Police Special Investigator Ella Clah calls in FBI Agent Dwayne Blalock for help, but she soon realizes that the murderer may have a link to her own past and to her father, murdered a decade earlier.