Felicity Howard, a young American studying at the College of the Transfiguration in Yorkshire, is devastated when she finds her beloved Fr. Dominic bludgeoned to death and Fr. Antony, her church history lecturer, soaked in his blood ...A Very Private Grave is a contemporary novel with a thoroughly modern heroine who must learn some ancient truths in order to solve the mystery and save her own life as she and Fr. Antony flee a murderer and follow clues that take them to out-of-the way sites in northern England and southern Scotland. The narrative skillfully mixes detection, intellectual puzzles, spiritual aspiration, romance, and the solving of clues ancient and modern. The book is in the same genre as Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, the novels of Kate Charles and Julia Spencer-Fleming and P. D. James' Death in Holy Orders. This is the first in a series of priest/sleuth novels featuring Felicity Howard and Fr. Antony.