Time Between The Stars Books In Order

Publication Order of Time Between The Stars Books

“Time Between the Stars” is a series of contemporary realistic fiction by Andrew M. Greely the American author. The first novel of the series was “Virgin and Martyr” that Greely first published in 1985 to much controversy and critical acclaim. Andrew M Greely was best known as a popular American novelist, journalist, sociologist, and Roman Catholic priest. Greely was a Sociology Professor who taught at the University of Chicago, and the University of Arizona. He also did some work at the National Opinion Research Center as a Research Associate. For many years, he was a columnist and regular contributor or several newspapers and magazines including Commonweal, America, the National Catholic Reporter, the New York Times, and the Chicago Sun-Times. His debut novel that was the 1958 published title “The Church in the Suburbs” was inspired by the notes he had written from the prodding of a sociology professor. He has often asserted that he has been the victim of anti-Catholic prejudice especially after the University of Chicago denied him tenure despite being a distinguished scholar and having taught at the institution for more than a decade. Over the course of his career, he has published over seventy scholarly works mostly about the Catholic Church, and how the American society influences how members practice it.

Andrew M. Greely was born in 1928 and grew up in Chicago during the Great Depression. By the time he was in second grade he was certain that he was born to be a priest. He went to the Chicago Archbishop Quigley Preparatory Seminary in Chicago, got a Bachelors in Theology, and was ordained as a priest in 1954. While in college, Greely was fascinated by the works of the likes of Evelyn Waugh and G.K. Chesterton who were prominent catholic novelists and poets. He thought that writing must be a very rewarding and challenging way of writing that he could one day do himself. It took a few years for Greely to become a regular contributor of essays and articles for Catholic conferences and magazines. He started out writing with a pseudonym, but by the time he published “The Church and the Suburbs” he was using his own name. Within twenty five years he had more than sixty titles to his name in the sociological and religious fields. From 1954 to 1964 he pastored in Chicago’s Christ the King Parish as an assistant pastor, while he attended the University of Chicago studying sociology.

“Time Between the Stars” series, similar to many of Greely’s works cover a many of topics that have to do with the influence of religion on modern life. The novels cover themes from history, ethnicity, the future, religious education, vocations, church politics, dying and death, secular politics, and the family among others. Most of the views in the novels have proved controversial particularly his views of sex and how it relates to modern day religious practice. The lead in the novels who is also one of his most popular protagonists in his novels makes his first appearance in “Virgin and Martyr” the first novel of the “Time Between the Stars” series. John Blackwood Ryan most popularly known as Blackie Ryan is the priest that brings to light issues of religious practice in modern religion. The novels also address the politics of the Catholic Church including papal elections and liberalism in the church. Blackie Ryan the lead protagonist in the series is not only a liberal Catholic priest with controversial views, but also an amateur sleuth that often helps his clients get to the bottom of mysterious happenings and often gets himself into sticky situations. In his work as an investigator he investigates anything from investment scandals in the church to murder in his Chicago locale to kidnapping. While the novels are for the most part dealing with serious issues of sociology and religion, they are light comedic, suspenseful, and concise novels that thrill and excite from the first page to the last. Andrew M. Greely’s “Time Between the Stars” is the perfect conjuring up of suspense and fun in effortless and typical aplomb that we have come to expect from the author.

“Angels of September” is the first enthralling novel of the “Between the Stars” series of novels by Andrew M Greely. Ann Reilly is a successful and beautiful girl that is living a life of terror. She is haunted by demons from her past that have made her work days terrible. She works at the Chicago art gallery and in recent times the paintings on the gallery, particularly the ones painted by a mad priest portend horror and obsession. She is slipping into an inescapable mire of hell. She cannot get free of a long hidden secret and this means that she cannot love back the man who is offering the love she so desperately needs. Father Ryan and his associates come in to help Ann in her struggle against demons that threaten her sanity and her life. She is facing dark terrors that leap out of the glassy visages to destroy any emotions she had left. Greely writes a crisp and witty novel that mocks the naivete of the ordinary catholic in matters of demonic oppression.

“Wages of Sin” is an excellent novel in the “Between the Stars” series of novels by Greely. The novel just like the other novels in the series is set in a Chicago neighborhood during the time of the Great Depression. Greely offers deep insights into the human heart as he introduces a tycoon struggling with love and re-connection. Lorcan Flynn the lead in the novel is rich businessman who is forced to reconstruct a love story turned horror narrative that happened more than forty decades past. The novel tells of how Flynn gets motivated to go back into his youth, into the events of a night that had led to him losing the only person he had ever loved. His first love had died in a mysterious unresolved explosion that had killed her entire family. Blackie Ryan comes in to investigate the case and soon starts to unearth some disturbing truths. As is often the case with Greely Flynn makes for a flawed protagonist that is full of integrity, though he is the embodiment of many of the optimistic views that many Catholics hold of the church.