Confederated Star Systems Books

Within a space opera landscape, H armony explores the spirituality of a different human culture bound by a rigid caste system. Laudae Sissy, the new H igh Priestess of the world called H armony, reaches across all seven castes of her society, seeking a new unity that will protect their isolation from the rest of the galaxy. But other cultures and races are testing their borders, searching for the most valuable commodity in civilized space. Sissy's quest leads her through a quagmire of human motivations in search of a new understanding of life upon H armony's Path.

When an alien ship crashes into the space station and diplomatic post Labyrinthe VII, the precarious balance between Harmony's High Preistess Sissy and Confederated Star System Agent Jake begins to dissolve. Suddenly they are caught in a web of deceit and intrigue as undercover agents for both the humans and the aliens vie for control not only of the space station, but of a new and unclaimed planet that may hold the answers many of them seek-or prove to be a deadly trap.

William Gladstone once pointed out that a culture reveals itself in how it cares for its dead. MOURNER, the third book in the Harmony series, vividly explores how three very different cultures treat their dead when the body of Laud Gregor, Harmony’s High Priest, goes missing between First Contact Café Space Station and the Harmony homeworld. Laud Gregor cannot be regarded as legally dead until he is officially buried—which means that Laudae Sissy, Harmony’s High Priestess, cannot institute the reforms her culture desperately needs until a new High Priest is named. Suspects abound, from the repulsive Dragons, who show up to claim the space station as lost property, to the secretive avian Maril, to disaffected power brokers closer to home. It doesn’t help that Jake Devlin, commander of the station, finds himself haunted by the impatient Laud while he navigates all these new threats and trying to solve the mystery—and to figure out how he and Sissy can possibly surmount the cultural differences that obstruct their growing love. Add in Jake’s former boss, the evasive spymaster Pammy, and tension escalates, especially when the body seems to keep moving. Can Harmony find peace? Will there ever be a happy ending for Sissy and Jake?