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ON THE HEAD OF A PIN

Sister Althea Parker is your average caseworker--assessing individual need, facilitating celestial placement, and providing both guardian angel and the blessed assistance through the transition period. (Her office is full of bright, cheery brochures with titles like "Body Language for the Newly Corporeal" and "Being Named A Prophet of the Lord: What Can I Expect?")

Yet when one of her clients is discovered stuffed in a dumpster, his wings torn off and blessed protectee missing, Sister Althea is not content to simply turn the matter over to the Principalities. Instead, she finds herself traveling deep into the seedy underbelly of celestial hierarchy, determined to discover the truth about her client, and find the missing saint.

Along the way, she finds a grudging ally in the unaffiliated Ramiel, an angel whose casual blasphemy and rumored Nephilim past make her dangerous company. (Her habit of blood-red lipstick and flirting with Ophanim doesn't help.) Yet together, they are intent on uncovering the ugly truth--even if it damns them.

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THE ANGELS OF CASTORWICK GREEN

It is a truth universally acknowledged that any well-meaning guardian angel of a respectable parish must be in want of a diabolical adversary.

For Radhael, protector of the lesser parish of Castorwick Green, such an adversary arrives in the form of Encanus, a fallen Power exiled to the country after certain indiscretions put him out of favor with the infernal hierarchy. (What one must do to be in Hell's black book scarcely deserves contemplation.) Endowed with every seductive charm and feverishly determined to see himself back to the den of sin that is London, Encanus threatens the small graces and simple prayers of all those Radhael has sworn to protect.

Yet moral arithmetic is not so simple, and humanity notoriously willful about such things. After long seasons of stalemate over the souls of Castorwick Green, Radhael and Encanus find themselves seeking out the only being who really understands their frustration--one another.

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FEAR TO TREAD

Very rarely, angels...break. Abandon their brothers and forsake humanity, flocking to the wild, derelict places where mothers already warn their children they cannot play. These "nests" quickly become notorious for their high, messy death tolls, borders defended by feral angels who no longer forgive those who trespass against them.

For filmmaker Reva Velasquez, however, this is more a challenge than a deterrent. Having lost her father to Fallen violence, she is determined make the hidden world of the Abbey of Saint Michael's, North America's largest nesting site, the subject of her next documentary--regardless of the dangers it presents. With loyal camerawoman Helene Sweet at her side, and (reformed) Fallen angel Abael as her guide, Reva ventures into the one place where even angels fear to tread.

Yet as Reva journeys deeper into the mystery surrounding Saint Michael's, the more she finds herself wondering if there are greater forces at play--greater even than heaven and hell.

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IN EXCELSIS

They didn't find any little green men.

Or Klingons or Vogons or the fuckers from Alien. No one stumbled into the cantina scene from Star Wars, is what she's trying to say. Instead, there was a blast of eyeball-searing divine light and several dozen celestial choirs crying out as the space shuttle crash-landed on the ninth sphere. And while angels look like a lot of things--waveforms, mechanoids, living fire, a grab-bag of animal heads and limbs--little green men are nowhere on the list.

Look, Commander Joanna Cross never imagined that humanity's first contact with extraterrestrial life would also be its first experience of the divine, okay? But in the wake of Themisto's crash and the discovery of Heaven as a place reachable via galactic coordinate system, she finds herself playing ambassador--to a place she once believed was a fairytale cooked up in the 2nd century AD. With inhabitants that could be the spawn of Megatron and Hieronymus Bosch. Plus, reporters won't stop asking if she's met Jesus yet.

Joanna is not a very happy camper about it.

Luckily, neither is her angelic counterpart, Zadkiel. A bad liar (despite the eight mouths) and a worse snob, the pair of them make thoroughly unlikely diplomats. But as tensions between Earth and the Ninth Sphere begin to boil over, they may need to rely on one another--to avoid a war that would consume the very cosmos.

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DAUGHTERS OF MEN

Yet God had forbidden relations between the sons of heaven and Adam's descendents, forbidden them as relations between brother and sister. Thus was the Archangel Gabriel sent to smite all those who had defied Him. And only the Elioud were spared, for the Archangel Gabriel would not raise his hand against a child for the fact of its birth.

the book of caiaphas

It has been millennia since the offspring of angels and men walked the world--the first generation Elioud, those monstrous giants with divinity in their bones. But with the threat of the Archangel Gabriel ever-present, very few angels have since attempted the sin of the Nephilim. The noble Elioud bloodlines of earth have become greatly diluted--the youngest daughter of the Abagiron has feathers growing along her shoulders; the Oryel patriarch is said to be able to touch fire without burning, but these are exceptions. Humanity seems increasingly doomed to its own skin.

Which is why the whole world takes notice when a young woman is discovered in rural Missouri--eight feet tall, with sightless eyes of fire and rows of mother-of-pearl teeth. She has a set of wings at her shoulders and another at her hips; they hum faintly, and hurt to touch.

She says her name is Abbdya, but does not know who named her, bore her, conceived her. She has been alone for as long as memory, she tells the breathless press, the adoring cameras, the Elioud families desperate to bring her into the fold. Fortunately, they care far more about what she wears and whom she sees than about her origins.

But the Archangel Gabriel cares. Determined to bring justice to whatever angel and human dared trespass on the Father's will, he cares very much. And he is determined to make Abbdya's life as difficult as possible until he finds out.

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WRESTLING WITH JACOB

1893--at Chicago's Colombian Exposition, the first articulated skeleton of Seraphinus familiaris, the Common Messenger Angel, is put on display.

1934--Seraphinus familiaris is declared an extinct species, along with S. principatus, S. dominicus, S. rotundus, and S. cherubus.

1923. Professor Virginia Colmes has never doubted the importance of her work, her place as the Theozoology Chair of Lawrence College. She likes to quote Robert Browne to her students--Nature is the art of God, children! she'll tell them as they gather around a fresh angel cadaver. And what better way to study His artistry than the making of His own hands?

(She has the wings of an Ophanim displayed on the wall of her office--a gift, from the first Mrs. Astor. They have been beautifully taxidermied, not a feather lost. At the right angle, they look almost as they they might actually take flight.)

Yet Virginia's surety is wholly shattered when one of her students (Mr. Braithwaite, notable only for his poor grades) comes to her dragging an unconscious and bloody specimen of S. familiaris, adamant that Professor Colmes protect them both from further harm.

He says its name is Machaton, as though angels had names.

Thus does Virginia find herself drawn into the hidden world of the angel trade--and an adventure that will cause her to doubt everything she holds true.

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CLOCKWISE

Mme. Marie Vichy is Paris' foremost engineer of human automata--intricate machines of clockwork and key-wound springs, made to move and act as lifelike as possible. Her current plat de résistance is the Vichy Angel, a six-foot tall man cast in nickel and brass, with wings that can extend and flap with the lifting of a catch. It has astonished audiences across Europe, its mechanized voice instructing guests at the World's Fair to Fear Not.

Which, perhaps, is why it is such a surprise when one morning the Angel greets her with a mild, It's A Beautiful Morning, Isn't It?

Or why she screamed.

Now Marie is faced with what to do with an automaton that has developed, if not cognizance, then something resembling it--and keeps referring to her as its creator. To get to the bottom of this mystery, she seeks out Judith Levy, London's foremost expert in golems (close enough, she thought) hoping that she might shed some light on how the inanimate becomes animate. However, their professional disagreements and tumultuous personal history may keep them from working together--and neither is prepared for what happens when the world discovers that it might be entertaining angels unawares.

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RENDER UNTO CAESAR

The thing is, there was no one left to throw the moneychangers out of the temple. No one around was angry enough to overturn the tables and scatter the silver and call them thieves, to open the cages and let the doves go free. Eloi, eloi--but you know, maybe he actually had forsaken us. Maybe he'd had too much faith in us not to break our toys this time around.

So no one came. There were just angels, with wings whiter and purer than humanity remembered being, and they wanted to serve. They wanted to be useful, they wanted to be used. And humanity is terrifyingly good at using things.

There's something sick about a creature with wings having a logo branded on its chest.

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SOUTH OF HEAVEN

Evrard de Brecons, third son to Sir Ganelon of the Fierce Countenance, has always been his family's great disappointment. No faerie-women ever came to him begging to rescue their daughters; when he gave aid to old women at the road-side, they invariably advised him to keep away from root vegetables, not how to find a sleeping princess. He never stayed in a vanishing castle, nor beheaded large green men, nor fought the Saracens in a glorious battle, nor glimpsed Avalon through the mist.

His life thus far has been so ordinary that his father has begun dropping hints about the priesthood. (It doesn't take anything special to get religion, after all.) Ever the dutiful son, Evrard is practicing praying in the family chapel when there is a sound like a group of troubadours falling off a cart. He is suddenly blinded by a flood of light and a thunderous voice proclaiming, Be Not Afraid!

...this is how Evrard de Brecons ends up braining an angel with a candlestick.

The angel--Boslenus, the name is Boslenus--uses his long white robe to staunch his bloody nose and says (a little resentfully) that Evrard has been chosen to undertake a dangerous quest. Namely, to retake the Holy Grail from an evil sorcerer and bring it to its proper place in the halls of the castle Corbenic.

Evrard laughs, and tells the angel that he must have the wrong de Brecons brother.

(Boslenus does not have a sense of humor.)

Suddenly, Evrard finds himself being dragged across the countryside by an angel who seems to have his own motives for their questing. They pick up increasingly strange company in their travels--Morien, a Moorish squire who seeks his father, the great Sir Aglovale; Anselma, a princess cursed to turn into a bear after sunset; and Roderick, a bard with a voice that could rust plate armor.

There are certain things his father and brothers failed to mention about quests, Evrard realizes. Most of them have to do with how much time you spend cold and wet, listening to Morien and Ansemla fight about who gets the last cake.

The rest of his questions are about angels, and whether you're allowed to kiss them.