Mourner. Confederated Star Systems, #3

William Gladstone once pointed out that a culture reveals itself in how it cares for its dead. MOURNER, the third book in the Harmony series, vividly explores how three very different cultures treat their dead when the body of Laud Gregor, Harmony's High Priest, goes missing between First Contact Café Space Station and the Harmony homeworld. Laud Gregor cannot be regarded as legally dead until he is officially buried-which means that Laudae Sissy, Harmony's High Priestess, cannot institute the reforms her culture desperately needs until a new High Priest is named.
Suspects abound, from the repulsive Dragons, who show up to claim the space station as lost property, to the secretive avian Maril, to disaffected power brokers closer to home. It doesn't help that Jake Devlin, commander of the station, finds himself haunted by the impatient Laud while he navigates all these new threats and trying to solve the mystery-and to figure out how he and Sissy can possibly surmount the cultural differences that obstruct their growing love.
Add in Jake's former boss, the evasive spymaster Pammy, and tension escalates, especially when the body seems to keep moving. Can Harmony find peace? Will there ever be a happy ending for Sissy and Jake?