Rabelais Bundle: Sonnez Les Matines & The Death of Rabelais, by J.C. Scharl
Sonnez Les Matines
One Mardi Gras night in 1520s Paris, college students Jean Calvin (founder of Calvinism and autocratic ruler of Geneva), Ignatius of Loyola (founder of the Counter-Reformation Catholic religious order, the Jesuits), and their bawdy friend Francois Rabelais (the humanist novelist) find themselves mixed up in a gruesome murder—and any one of them might be guilty. The ensuing investigation sparks a battle of wits and weapons, plunging them into questions of justice and mercy, grace and sin, innocence, guilt, love, and contempt. Before the bells ring in the start of Lent, they must confront the darkest parts of their souls and find the courage to pursue truth in a world that seems intent on obscuring it.
The Death of Rabelais
François Rabelais, on the run from religious conflict in Paris, falls in with an old friend and a strange new companion on a blizzarding night in January. On a dare, he trades his Jester’s cap for a Death’s cloak and accepts an invitation to join a feisty Twelfth Night festival. Little does he know that, before the night is up, he will go head-to-head with Death itself. As the group indulges in a series of games, from a riddle contest to a morality play, Rabelais proves that the chops of detection he acquired in Sonnez Les Matines continue to serve his comic search for truth; uncovering a knot of politics, romance, love, and hate that threatens to damn them all.
Wearing Death’s own guise and armed only with his favorite weapon, laughter, Rabelais must face his greatest fear: the possibility that grief, not joy, is at the center of reality.
