The town felt evil—Peter Balsam knew that the second he arrived in the desert outside Neilsville, but he was too desperate to turn away. He hadn’t cut it as a priest or a husband, so his only hope was a teaching job with his old friend Peter Vernon, who was now monsignor of St. Francis Xavier’s high school. However, Vernon had since become a religious fanatic, calling Balsam’s psychological research “heresy” and denouncing the girls of his own high school as evil...but then those girls start dying, committing suicide after suicide in a wave of inexplicable atrocity. As the zealous townsfolk pin the blame on Balsam’s psychology classes, he realizes his suspicions about the town were right but missed the mark: the townsfolk are more than just zealous, Vernon is more than just a fanatic, and a bloody cabal of priests is using the chaos to enact a ritual unseen since medieval Italy at the height of the Inquisition.

• The Manhattan Hunt Club
• Midnight Voices
• The Right Hand of Evil
• Cry for the Strangers
• Comes the Blind Fury