Setting out for the Saint Giles leper colony outside Shrewsbury, Brother Cadfael has more pressing matters on his mind than the grand wedding coming to his abbey. Yet as fate would have it, Cadfael arrives at Saint Giles just as the nuptial party passes the colony's gates. He sees the fragile bride, looking like a prisoner between her two stern guardians, and the bridegroom--an arrogant, fleshy aristocrat old enough to be her grandfather--and he quickly discerns that this union may be more damned than blessed. Indeed, a savage murder will interrupt the May-December marriage and leave Brother Cadfael with a dark, terrible mystery to solve. The key to the killing--and a secret--is hidden among the lepers of Saint Giles. Now, Brother Cadfael's skills must ferret out a sickness not of the body, but of a twisted soul. "Cunningly contrived with a great sense of period detail." -- "Yorkshire Post" "Successful and gripping...Once again Ellis Peters has combined a proper, carefully plotted detective story with a carefully detailed, convincing evocation of medieval life." -- "Times Literary Supplement (London)" "There's grey matter under that tonsure and oodles of scholarly medieval info to be gleaned." -- "Observer" Ellis Peters (1913-1995) was the pen name of English novelist Edith Pargeter, author of scores of books under her own name. She was a recipient of the Silver Dagger Award and the Cartier Diamond Dagger Award, conferred by the Crime Writers' Association of Great Britain, as well as the coveted Edgar Award, given by the Mystery Writers of America. Johanna Ward (a.k.a. Kate Reading) is an Audie Award-winning narrator and has received numerous Earphones Awards from AudioFile magazine. She is also a theater actor in the Washington, DC, area and has been a member of Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company since 1987. Her work onstage has been recognized by the Helen Hayes Awards Society, among others. She and her husband live in Hyattsville, Maryland, with their two children. Used Book in Good Condition