Dark Nativity. / George Pitcher.

The Rev'd Natalie Cross, a high-profile priest at St Paul's Cathedral, is tipped to be one of the first female bishops in the Church of England. She could be happy. But she's not. Natalie's work among the desperately poor is intricately bound up with her wounded past. Her fierce humanity has already got her into trouble as a foreign aid worker among the refugees of Sudan and the Middle East. And when she is drawn into the world of peace-process politics, it seems it's not her faith she needs so much as a brutal self-reliance born of damage done long ago. In a godforsaken world of oppression and terror, where cynical intelligence agencies operate outside the rule of international law, she is forced to respond in kind to those who would so cruelly use and abuse her. The most dangerous people are not always those holding the guns - and Natalie will need to abandon morality and tap into her own dark side to take them on.