Father Brown: The Essential Tales (Modern Library Classics)

G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown may seem a pleasantly doddering Roman Catholic priest, but appearances deceive. With keen observation and an unerring sense of man’s frailties–gained during his years listening to confessions–Father Brown succeeds in bringing even the most elusive criminals to justice.

This definitive collection of fifteen stories, selected by the American Chesterton Society, includes such classics as “The Blue Cross,” “The Secret Garden,” and “The Paradise of Thieves.” As P. D. James writes in her Introduction, “We read the Father Brown stories for a variety pleasures, including their ingenuity, their wit and intelligence, and for the brilliance of the writing. But they provide more. Chesterton was concerned with the greatest of all problems, the vagaries of the human heart.”

P. D. James is the bestselling author of many celebrated literary mystery novels. She served in the Police and Criminal Justice departments of Great Britain’s Home Office, and in 1991 she was made a life peer as Baroness James of Holland Park. She lives in London and Oxford.