Anne Emery

Declan Burke fled Ireland forty years ago and never looked back. Now settled in New York, he thinks he's put the old country behind him, until he reads the obituary of one Cathal Murphy. The obituary, he sees at once, is not about Murphy at all. It is a coded indictment of Burke's own life - and an announcement of his impending death. Halifax lawyer Monty Collins investigates the obit with its allusions to Burke's IRA past. Collins gets no help from...

Lawyer and bluesman Monty Collins is used to defending murderers, and occasionally investigating murders himself. But he can't round up the usual suspects this time. The blood-drenched body of Reinhold Schellenberg, a world-renowned German theologian, has been found on the altar of an old church in Halifax, Nova Scotia, during Vespers on Saint Cecilia's day. The man has nearly been decapitated. The controversial priest, once a top insider in the Vatican,...

Winner of the Arthur Ellis Award, Best First Novel Father Brennan Burke is the main suspect in the murder of a young woman. Defense attorney Monty Collins steps up to defend him, but realizes the only way to exonerate him is to dive into the secrets of his past ... Be careful what you wish for, his mother used to say. Yet how many times, in his twenty years defending the underprivileged, has Monty Collins wished for a client who is intelligent, articulate,...

The latest mystery from a two-time winner of the Arthur Ellis Award Father Brennan Burke is struggling, and he's been coping the only way he knows how: self-medicating with drink. He's barely managing, but his troubles intensify when the body of one of his parishioners washes up on the coast of Halifax. Meika Keller came to Canada after escaping past a checkpoint in the Berlin Wall. An army colonel is charged with her murder, and defense lawyer...

An unsolved murder investigation in 1970s Ireland from "one of Canada's finest novelists." - Ottawa Review of Books Shay Rynne grew up in the Corporation Flats - public housing - in Fenian Street, Dublin. He has always toyed with the idea of joining the Garda Síochána, the Irish police. But in the early 1970s, young fellows from the tenements of Dublin have not been welcomed in the police force. When his friend Rosaleen is killed and the case...

In the seventh book of the deftly written Collins-Burke Mystery Series, Father Brennan Burke's patience is pushed to the limit when a young woman announces to the world that the Virgin Mary has appeared to her in the churchyard, and hordes of pilgrims, souvenir hawkers, and reporters converge on the scene. But, as unwelcome as these guests may be, they pale in comparison to yet another aggravation in Father BurkeÓ³ life, a controversial talk show...

Go back to the beginning of the Collins-Burke mysteries with this collection, which includes the first three novels in the award-winning series: Sign of the Cross, Obit, and Barrington Street Blues. • Sign of the Cross: This winner of the Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel introduces lawyer Monty Collins who meets Father Brennan Burke when he represents him: the priest is the lead suspect in the murder of a young woman. Conflict between lawyer...

Sheila comments on her neighbors' energy-saving habits, like using a wood stove in the winter and drying clothes on a clothesline instead of in the dryer, but she likes their home-grown fruits and vegetables and enjoys making popcorn on the wood stove with them.