Michael O'Brien presents a thrilling apocalyptic novel about the condition of the Roman Catholic Church at the end of time. It explores the state of the modern world, and the strengths and weaknesses of the contemporary religious scene, by taking his central character, Father Elijah Schafer, a Carmelite priest, on a secret mission for the Vatican which embroils him in a series of crises and subterfuges affecting the ultimate destiny of the Church. Father Elijah is a convert from Judaism, a survivor of the Holocaust, a man once powerful in Israel. For twenty years he has been buried in the...

In this fast-paced, reflective novel, (the second in a trilogy following Strangers and Sojourners) Michael O'Brien presents the dramatic tale of a family that finds itself in the path of a totalitarian government. Set in the near future, the story describes the rise of a police state in North America in which every level of society is infected with propaganda, confusion and disinformation. Few people are equipped to recognize what is happening because the culture of the Western world has been deformed by a widespread undermining of moral absolutes.Against this background, the Delaney...

Many organizations are engaged in a race to prevent the execution by lethal injection of death sentenced prisoners in Texas (and elsewhere in the USA). Some of these men and women claim to be completely innocent, as described in this book. Texas is the most punitive place within one of the harshest penal systems in the world. Michael O'Brien - who was himself wrongly convicted of murder - dissects a selection of Death Row cases with the eye of a man who has spent years watching how miscarriages of justice happen and why. He explains how practitioners, politicians and others are in denial and...