I returned to the village after a time away at university and, seeking out my old friend, I came instead upon a mystery: Adam's cottage, his garden, and Adam himself were nowhere to be found. The author and minister Frederick Buechner wrote that "in one way or another, man comes upon mystery as a summons to pilgrimage." And so it was for me. To find my friend, or at least solve the riddle of what had become of him, I embarked on a new journey of discovery. Filled with shamanistic insights and magical experiences, this spiritual memoir tells the true story of Ross Heaven's search for Adam Dilwyn Vaughan. The enigmatic Adam, who introduced Heaven to the lost art of sin eating and other Celtic traditions, left him a gift—his journal. As Heaven travels on the dragon path, he explores the mysteries of the Holy Grail, encounters spirit healers, and experiences an incredible vision of the earth oracle. His fascinating journey ultimately leads to powerful revelations of his life purpose and the fate of humankind. This guide includes a sin eater's workbook of simple Celtic divination, dreamwork, and intuitive practices. Praise: "The story is beautifully told, characters vividly described, and for anyone vaguely interested in the way that dimensions intertwine, this book is fascinating."—Kindred Spirit

“For fans of The Handmaid’s Tale...a debut novel with a dark setting and an unforgettable heroine...is a riveting depiction of hard-won female empowerment” (The Washington Post). The Sin Eater walks among us, unseen, unheard Sins of our flesh become sins of Hers Following Her to the grave, unseen, unheard The Sin Eater Walks Among Us. For the crime of stealing bread, fourteen-year-old May receives a life sentence: she must become a Sin Eater—a shunned woman, brutally marked, whose fate is to hear the final confessions of the dying, eat ritual foods symbolizing their sins as a funeral rite, and thereby shoulder their transgressions to grant their souls access to heaven. Orphaned and friendless, apprenticed to an older Sin Eater who cannot speak to her, May must make her way in a dangerous and cruel world she barely understands. When a deer heart appears on the coffin of a royal governess who did not confess to the dreadful sin it represents, the older Sin Eater refuses to eat it. She is taken to prison, tortured, and killed. To avenge her death, May must find out who placed the deer heart on the coffin and why. “Very much reminiscent of The Handmaid’s Tale…it transcends its historical roots to give us a modern heroine” (Kirkus Reviews). “A novel as strange as it is captivating” (BuzzFeed), The Sin Eater “is a treat for fans of feminist speculative fiction” (Publishers Weekly) and “exactly what historical fiction lovers have unknowingly craved” (New York Journal of Books).

New Orleans: Henry Marrier's been good too long. A medical school geek, closet gun freak, and crime buff, he's tired of the books and towing the line. Ronaldo is his best friend from high school. Ex drug dealer and current mortician's apprentice, he's got work for Henry: guard the houses of the dead while the funeral's going on. Don't steal from them yourself. Especially not drugs, drug money, and evidence of other sin. But Henry's been good too long, and being bad is much easier than he would ever dream--or want. Faked funerals. Corpse mutilation. Deadly strippers, a crop of eyeballs, and murder. How did he get here, again? More importantly, how can he get back?

New Orleans - 1846 - Jedidiah Lucas was born under a cloud of misfortune. After the Civil War, circumstances force him to leave New Orleans and destiny leads him to Black Water Township in Louisiana. This quiet, peaceful town, nestled by the woods of Black Water Swamp, has a problem. Their Sin-Eater has died, and they desperately need another to take his place. The leadership of the town sees opportunity when Jedidiah arrives. By manipulating certain information, the young man is forced to stay, and he is taken in by Paloma Day, an old Gypsy fortune teller whom everyone calls the swamp witch. Trouble begins with the birth of twin girls, only one of them is pronounced dead at birth. But is she? When a lie is told and a secret is kept, hatred, prejudice and the superstitious nature of the town's people bring dire consequence to a young girl with a special ability. When things go terribly wrong in Black Water, the blame is placed on Hattie - The Sin-Eater's Daughter.

Aria Knight has an unusual set of skills: she will hold back the hounds of Hell so that you can fly toward the Pearly Gates, and she will wipe your slate clean so you don't become karma's bitch…for a price. A Sin Eater has to make a living in today's world somehow. But when she's called in the dead of night to perform her rite for a recluse billionaire, she stumbles upon a murder scene, and the evidence points to her. In an attempt to clear her name and uncover the true culprit, Aria is forced to team up with a private investigator who's possessed by three spirits and a handsome wizard who would rather see all Sin Eaters like Aria go extinct. Aria knows her job is never easy, but now it’s become downright deadly. SIN EATER is the first book of the Aria Knight Chronicles by USA Today bestselling author Samantha LaFantasie and Alesha Escobar, author of the bestselling Gray Tower Trilogy.

Grady McDonnell is the latest in a long line of sin-eaters, people who absorb and cleanse the souls of the recently deceased. He has been working for a mysterious Organization that sends him around the world, doing his job, but lately he has begun to wonder who is behind the Organization and why he is sent where he is sent. In this novel, he learns that the Organization hires a lot of special people like him. Including another sin-eater, but this one has begun killing people. Recruited to be part of a special team that includes psychics, clairvoyants, and a mysterious young woman who can summon her guardian angel, Grady attempts to track down and neutralize the renegade. The journey takes him around the world, from Australia and, finally, to a tiny shack in Alaska where a strange man hides a horrific secret. It turns out that the Organization may have its fingers in a lot of things, and not all of them are good for mankind. In fact, things get a lot deeper than Grady ever dreamed of...even in his worst nightmare.

The sins of the past break through to the present in this chilling tale of supernatural suspense. When Benedict Doyle finds himself the owner of his great-grandfather’s North London house, it stirs memories of his time there as a frightened eight-year-old and the strange glimpses that revealed the darkness in his family’s past—through which runs the grisly thread of an old legend about a chess set believed to possess a dark power. And when Michael Flint, meeting Benedict in Oxford, starts to research his story, chilling facts begin to emerge—facts that suggest the old legend contains a disturbing reality. Could the chess set’s malevolence be reaching out to the present?

Argyle eased the warm loaf right and left and downed swift gulps of beer and venial sin then lit into the bread now leavened with the corpses's cardinal mischiefs, then he said "Six pence, I'm sorry." and the widow paid him. So opens the unsantioned priesthood of The Sin-Eater: A Breviary - Thomas Lynch's collection of two dozen, twenty-four line poems - a book of hours in the odd life and times of Argyle, the sin-eater. Celtic and druidic, scapegoat and outlier, a fixture in the funerary landscape of former centuries, Argyle's doubt-ridden witness seems entirely relevant to our difficult times. By turns worshipful and irreverent, good-humoried and grim, these poems examine the deeper meanings of Eucharist and grace, forgiveness and faith, atonement and reconcilation.

In Lormere the queen is stirring up war and has unleashed the sinister Bringer. Betrayed by the one she loves, Twylla is in self-imposed exile. But for how long? The people need a leader. They need something to believe in - whether it's true or not.

People in Merit, Wisconsin, always said Jimmy was . . . you know. But people said all sorts of stupid stuff. Nobody really knew anything. Nobody really knew Jimmy. I guess you could say I knew Jimmy as well as anyone (which was not very well). I knew what scared him. And I knew he had dreams?even if I didn't understand them. Even if he nearly ruined my life to pursue them. Jimmy's dead now, and I definitely know that better than anyone. I know about blood and bone and how bodies decompose. I know about shadows and stones and hatchets. I know what a last cry for help sounds like. I know what blood looks like on my own hands. What I don't know is if I can trust my own eyes. I don't know who threw the stone. Who swung the hatchet? Who are the shadows? What do the living owe the dead?