The critically acclaimed novel from New York Times bestselling author James Lee Burke, featuring Texas Sheriff Hackberry Holland in an epic tale that is equal parts thriller, Western, and literary masterpiece. James Lee Burke returns to the Texas border town of his bestseller Rain Gods, where a serial killer presumed dead is very much alive…and where sheriff Hackberry Holland, now a widower, fights for survival—his own, and of the citizens he’s sworn to protect. When alcoholic ex-boxer Danny Boy Lorca witnesses a man tortured to death in the desert, Hackberry’s investigation leads him to Anton Ling, a mysterious Chinese woman known for sheltering illegals. Ling denies any knowledge of the attack, but something in her aristocratic beauty seduces Hack into overlooking that she is as dangerous as the men she harbors. And when soulless Preacher Jack Collins reemerges, the cold-blooded killer may prove invaluable to Hackberry. This time, he and the Preacher have a common enemy.

For centuries, the Feast of Fools has been condemned and occasionally celebrated as a disorderly, even transgressive Christian festival, in which reveling clergy elected a burlesque Lord of Misrule, presided over the divine office wearing animal masks or women’s clothes, sang obscene songs, swung censers that gave off foul-smelling smoke, played dice at the altar, and otherwise parodied the liturgy of the church. Afterward, they would take to the streets, howling, issuing mock indulgences, hurling manure at bystanders, and staging scurrilous plays. The problem with this popular account—intriguing as it may be—is that it is wrong. In Sacred Folly, Max Harris rewrites the history of the Feast of Fools, showing that it developed in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries as an elaborate and orderly liturgy for the day of the Circumcision (1 January)—serving as a dignified alternative to rowdy secular New Year festivities. The intent of the feast was not mockery but thanksgiving for the incarnation of Christ. Prescribed role reversals, in which the lower clergy presided over divine office, recalled Mary’s joyous affirmation that God "has put down the mighty from their seat and exalted the humble." The "fools" represented those chosen by God for their lowly status. The feast, never widespread, was largely confined to cathedrals and collegiate churches in northern France. In the fifteenth century, high-ranking clergy who relied on rumor rather than firsthand knowledge attacked and eventually suppressed the feast. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century historians repeatedly misread records of the feast; their erroneous accounts formed a shaky foundation for subsequent understanding of the medieval ritual. By returning to the primary documents, Harris reconstructs a Feast of Fools that is all the more remarkable for being sanctified rather than sacrilegious.

In England in the late thirteenth century, a young chorister at the Cathedral of Saint Aelred, an outcast due to his crippled foot, sympathizes with the city's other outcasts, the Jews, and sets out to prove their leader innocent of murder.

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“America’s best novelist” (The Denver Post) brings back one of his most fascinating characters—Texas sheriff Hackberry Holland, cousin to lawman Billy Bob Holland—in this heart-pounding bestseller. In a heat-cracked border town, the bodies of nine illegal aliens—women and girls, killed execution-style—are unearthed in a shallow grave. Haunted by a past he can’t shake and his own private demons, Hack attempts to untangle the grisly case, which may lead to more bloodshed. Damaged young Iraq vet Pete Flores, who saw too much before fleeing the crime scene, and his girlfriend, Vikki Gaddis, are running for their lives. Sorting through the lowlifes who are hunting down Pete, and with Preacher Jack Collins, a Godfearing serial killer for hire, in the mix, Hack is caught up in a terrifying race for survival—for Pete, Vikki, and himself.

In this fascinating interpretation of contemporary culture and theology, Harvey Cox examines both the loss and reemergence of festivity and fantasy in Western civilization. He evaluates both processes from a theological perspective, defining festivity as the capacity for genuine revelry and joyous celebration and defining fantasy as the faculty for envisioning radically alternative life situations. t speaks directly to such contemporary movements as the theology of hope, the rapidly disappearing radical theology, and the theology of culture. For many it will provide a new perspective on the renewal of religious life and the secular search for religious experience.

Soon after Anna Pigeon joins the famed wolf study team of Isle Royale National Park in the middle of Lake Superior, the wolf packs begin to behave in peculiar ways. Giant wolf prints are found, and Anna spies the form of a great wolf from a surveillance plane. When a female member of the team is savaged, Anna is convinced they are being stalked, and what was once a beautiful, idyllic refuge becomes a place of unnatural occurrences and danger beyond the ordinary…