Monday, 30 December 2019
Sunday, 29 December 2019
Friday, 27 December 2019
Still Waters (Sandhamn Murders Series) by Viveca Sten
Paperback: Still Waters (2015) is the first instalment in the popular Sandhamn Murders series set in Sweden.
On a hot July morning on Sweden’s idyllic vacation island of Sandhamn, a man takes his dog for a walk and makes a gruesome discovery: a body, tangled in fishing net, has washed ashore.
Police detective Thomas Andreasson is the first to arrive on the scene. Before long, he has identified the deceased as Krister Berggren, a bachelor from the mainland who has been missing for months. All signs point to an accident - until another brutalized corpse is found at the local bed-and-breakfast. But this time it is Berggren’s cousin, whom Thomas interviewed in Stockholm just days before.
As the island’s residents reel from the news, Thomas turns to his childhood friend, local lawyer Nora Linde. Together, they attempt to unravel the riddles left behind by these two mysterious outsiders - while trying to make sense of the difficult twists their own lives have taken since the shared summer days of their youth.
Still Waters is translated from the Swedish by Marlaine Delargy.
About the author: Viveca Sten is married, with three children. Viveca lives just north of Stockholm. She has had a highly successful legal career as a lawyer and until recently held the position as General Counsel at PostNord (the Swedish & Danish mail service), but left in 2011 to focus on her writing. Since 1917, Viveca's family have spent all their summers at Sandhamn where her novels are set. She has written several non-fiction books prior to her crime novels. She is a great humanitarian and has for several years been involved in the Red Cross Centre for Tortured Refugees. Her warmth and caring has been passed on to her three children and last summer her daughter left for the US to tour with the volunteer organization Up with People.
The first five books in the Sandhamn Murder series have been made into miniseries in three parts by Sweden's largest commercial TV-channel, TV4. From the start in December 2010, it was huge success, with more than 1.7 million viewers per episode. The series has been broadcast in all Nordic countries and also in many European countries such as Germany, France and Italy and even as far away as Japan. In the fall of 2014, a Polish version with Polish actors premiered on Polish national television.
Viveca describes herself as driven, stubborn and caring, which is obvious when you meet her, read her books and see all the things she has accomplished in life.
About the translator: Marlaine Delargy works as a translator and adult learning support tutor. She studied Swedish and German at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, and taught German in comprehensive schools for almost twenty years. She has translated novels by Åsa Larsson, Ninni Holmqvist, Kristina Ohlsson, Helene Tursten, John Ajvide Lindqvist, Therese Bohman and Johan Theorin - with whom she won the CWA International Dagger 2010 for The Darkest Room - among others, and serves on the editorial board of the Swedish Book Review. She lives in Shropshire, England.
Rating: 5/5
Report From Calabria: A Season With The Carthusian Monks by A Priest
Paperback: He who has the word of Jesus can truly listen also to his silence. - St Ignatius of Antioch
Devoted to a life of intense contemplative prayer, the Carthusian monks guard their solitude jealously and rarely allow visitors to live with them. The author of this book, an American priest, was privileged to spend four months with the Carthusian community in Calabria, Italy, the resting place of the founder of their order, Saint Bruno. He followed the daily regimen of the monks and wrote home to family and friends to share his experiences.
The priest's journal allows readers to get a deep sense of what this life of prayer feels like: he describes distinctive features of the Carthusian vocation and offers insights gained by a life devoted to silence and solitude.
There are books that explore the Carthusian way of life, but what makes Report from Calabria (2017) different and unique is that it is more like a series of short notes sent home from a foreign land, a sketch book rather than a finished canvas. But sketches have an appeal of their own: they offer a freshness of impressions and can entice us to study their subject more deeply.
The text is accompanied with beautiful photographs of the daily life followed by the monks of Serra San Bruno. The contemplative vocation - bracing and yet deeply human - comes alive in this account of four months in which very little happened but yet a lot was going on.
It is an invitation to readers to not only gain an insight into monastic life, but to clear some space in our busy lives to encounter God more deeply.
Preface by the Author/Priest: More than ten years ago the remarkable film Into Great Silence by Philip Gröning allowed the public to take a peek into the world of the Carthusian monks, considered by many to be the most austere religious order in the Catholic Church. Gröning spent six months filming at the Grande Chartreuse and dedicated two and a half years to editing his footage. The three-hour movie, like the Carthusian way of life itself, was unusual: no soundtrack, almost no dialogue, no dramatic plot. He allowed the viewer to enter into the life of men who spend almost their entire day in solitary prayer, and much of their night in singing God's praises.
What would it be like to live this way? The monastic life is found in many cultures, and it has been an important part of Christianity since the earliest centuries. My own introduction to it came from reading The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton when I was in high school. I was captivated, as countless others have been. Ever since, I have felt the attraction of a life devoted to contemplative prayer, I have delved into the rich spiritual literature that the monastic life has produced, and I have visited monasteries all over the world.
When I was in the seminary a young man several years behind me entered a Carthusian monastery in Spain. Several years later I was able to visit him in his monastery with our bishop. We were there for only twenty-four hours, but the experience moved me deeply. I remember saying to the bishop as we drove away, "I feel like someone has just doused me with a glass of ice water."
The atmosphere was simple in the extreme - a life stripped of many of the comforts to which we are accustomed, a life pared down to the essentials. At the same time, our friend struck me as very relaxed, conversational and natural.
The names of the members of the community at Serra San Bruno have been changed out of respect for the Carthusian desire for privacy. It is customary for Carthusian authors to remain anonymous; that custom will be honoured by the author/priest of this book.
Thursday, 26 December 2019
Wednesday, 25 December 2019
Tuesday, 24 December 2019
The Best People: A Tale of Trials and Errors by Marc Grossberg
Hardback: The physics of life is that every choice forecloses other choices.
Paddy Moran, a former cop from Brooklyn, is a newly licensed attorney in Houston with dreams and aspirations to make it big. He survives early rough bumps and ethical challenges. Then, through networking, he lands two high-profile clients. With his brash moxie and brilliant legal strategy, he gets outstanding outcomes that put him on the success trajectory to the upper echelons of the city's divorce bar. But, faced with difficult choices in high-stakes litigation, will he balance his thirst for recognition and respect with his sense of right and wrong?
The Best People (2019) also follows Pilar Galt, a sensuous, intelligent single mother from the Houston barrios, for whom a temp assignment evolves into a relationship with the richest man in town. Her path intersects with Paddy's and eventually converges during a pivotal time in her life when she must overcome self-destructive tendencies to survive.
A legal drama and social satire set after Enron and before the devastation of Hurricane Harvey, The Best People portrays a Houston as it is, a glitzy meritocracy populated with larger-than-life characters. It is the landscape where the country-club and café-society sets clash amidst clever legal manoeuvering, big law firm politics, a Ponzi scheme and judicial corruption.
In a stunning debut novel, author Marc Grossberg, a native Houstonian who has practised law in Houston for more than fifty years, offers a glimpse into a world where you cannot always tell who the best people are.
About the author: Marc Grossberg is an observer and a listener. He has a passion for his family, friends and clients, and for books that entertain and provoke him. He has practiced law in his native Houston for over fifty years. Somehow he overcame being a Board Certified tax lawyer and one of the Best Lawyers in America© to write The Best People. Marc is a proud product of the Houston public schools, the University of Houston and the University of Texas School of Law. He lives in the NOW and goes wherever his “green light” tells him the intersection might be interesting.
Rating: 5/5
Monday, 23 December 2019
The Sacrament by Olaf Olafsson
Hardback: The Sacrament (2019) is the haunting, vivid story of a nun whose past returns to her in unexpected ways, all while investigating a mysterious death and a series of harrowing abuse claims.
A young nun is sent by the Vatican to investigate allegations of misconduct at a Catholic school in Iceland. During her time there, on a gray winter’s day, a young student at the school watches the school’s headmaster, Father August Franz, fall to his death from the church tower.
Two decades later, the child - now a grown man, haunted by the past - calls the nun back to the scene of the crime. Seeking peace and calm in her twilight years at a convent in France, she has no choice to make a trip to Iceland again, a trip that brings her former visit, as well as her years as a young woman in Paris, powerfully and sometimes painfully to life. In Paris, she met an Icelandic girl who she has not seen since, but whose acquaintance changed her life, a relationship she relives all while reckoning with the mystery of August Franz’s death and the abuses of power that may have brought it on.
In The Sacrament, critically acclaimed novelist Olaf Olafsson looks deeply at the complexity of our past lives and selves; the faulty nature of memory; and the indelible mark left by the joys and traumas of youth.
Affecting and beautifully observed, The Sacrament is both propulsively told and poignantly written - tinged with the tragedy of life’s regrets but also moved by the possibilities of redemption, a new work from a novelist who consistently surprises and challenges.
The Sacrament is based on real events that took place near where the author grew up. And of course it is. No one is shocked by the widespread sexual abuse in the Catholic Church - not anymore. Olafsson may not have given us a new story, but he has reminded us it is still a relevant one as institutional power continues to prey on both the weak and the resolute. (chireviewofbooks)
About the author: Olaf Olafsson was born in Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1962. He studied physics as a Wien scholar at Brandeis University. He is the author of five previous novels, The Journey Home, Absolution, Walking into the Night, Restoration, and One Station Away, and a story collection, Valentines. His books have been published to critical acclaim in more than twenty languages. Olaf is the recipient of the O Henry Award and the Icelandic Literary Award, was shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor Prize, and has twice been nominated for the IMPAC Award. He is executive vice president of Time Warner and lives in New York City with his wife and three children.
Rating: 5/5
Sunday, 22 December 2019
Saturday, 21 December 2019
The House Of The Virgin Mary: The Miraculous Story Of Its Journey From Nazareth To A Hillside In Italy by Godfrey E Phillips
Paperback: Come to know the house of the Virgin Mary which, according to numberless saints, scores of popes, and many official documents of the Vatican (and to protect it from the depredations of the Saracens) was in the late 1200s miraculously transported from Mary’s village of Nazareth to a hillside in Italy.
In this house, the Virgin Mary herself was born, she was saluted by the angel Gabriel, and Jesus himself became flesh. There he spent the first twelve years of his life.
Reverend GE Phillips’ book, The House of the Virgin Mary (2017), is the comprehensive tale of the Holy House in Nazareth, and its miraculous transport to Loreto, Italy – a delightful book that carefully lays out the evidence for the miracle and affords you detailed, convincing answers to those who have challenged it. You will learn about:
- Its veneration in Nazareth before it mysteriously disappeared, leaving only its foundation
- Its sudden, miraculous appearance on a hillside in Italy, dismaying local residents
- How amazed Italians used exacting detective skills in Italy and later in Palestine to discover where the house had come from
- How believers have venerated Our Lady of Loreto and revered her Holy House for over 700 years now
- The story of the fifteenth century erection of a magnificent basilica over the humble Holy House and the sixteenth century enclosing of the fragile structure in a grand marble encasement
- The cure in the Holy House of two Popes in succession (and the tale of many other miracles witnessed there)
Among the evidence brought forth in this powerful book are:
- Scores of quotations from 13th century witnesses, and from hundreds of scholars and visitors in the seven centuries since then
- Other original sources from three nations: letters, wills, testimony, summaries, official reports from ancient archives, and documents (including encyclicals) from the Vatican itself testifying to the authenticity of the miracle and the merit of devotion to the Holy House and Our Lady of Loreto.
- Believers will be thrilled and consoled by the evidence presented here; skeptics will have their skepticism tempered and many will even come to see the truth about the Holy House: it is a miraculous dwelling, testimony in stone to the loving power of our God.
That is why pontiff after pontiff has encouraged belief in the miraculous transport of the Holy House to Italy and why the same belief has been rapturously adopted by a host of saints including many Doctors of the Church.
Over 45 popes have sanctioned the story of the transport, including Popes Benedict XII, Blessed Urban V, Urban VI, Pope Paul II, Julius II, Leo X, St. Pius V, Gregory XIII, Sixtus V, Clement VIII, Clement X, Innocent XII, Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X, Benedict XV, and many others.
Countless saints, too, have gone on pilgrimage there, including St Francis of Assisi, St Francis Xavier, St Ignatius, St Charles Borromeo, St Aloysius Gonzaga, St Stanislaus Kostka, St Francis of Sales, St Benedict Labre, St Alphonsus Liguori, St Thérèse of Lisieux, and others.
Perhaps it is finally time for you to learn about Our Lady of Loreto and her Holy House, and to receive from devotion to them the many new heavenly graces and benefits the Church promises will be yours.
About the author: Reverend Godfrey Edward Phillips (1878 - 1961) was a Professor of Mission Studies at Selly Oak Colleges in Birmingham, England, from 1939-1946.
Friday, 20 December 2019
Wednesday, 18 December 2019
If You Tell: A True Story Of Murder, Family Secrets, And The Unbreakable Bond Of Sisterhood by Gregg Olsen
Paperback: After more than a decade, when sisters Nikki, Sami, and Tori Knotek hear the word mom, it claws like an eagle’s talons, triggering memories that have been their secret since childhood. Until now.
For years, behind the closed doors of their farmhouse in Raymond, Washington, their sadistic mother, Shelly, subjected her girls to unimaginable abuse, degradation, torture, and psychic terrors. Through it all, Nikki, Sami, and Tori developed a defiant bond that made them far less vulnerable than Shelly imagined. Even as others were drawn into their mother’s dark and perverse web, the sisters found the strength and courage to escape an escalating nightmare that culminated in multiple murders.
Harrowing and heartrending, If You Tell is a survivor’s story of absolute evil—and the freedom and justice that Nikki, Sami, and Tori risked their lives to fight for. Sisters forever, victims no more, they found a light in the darkness that made them the resilient women they are today—loving, loved, and moving on.
If You Tell (2019) is the true story of three young girls caught in the web of a coldly calculating killer: their mother. Nikki, Sami, and Tori wanted the world to know what their mother had done. The sisters were the ones who reached out to Olsen so that they could stop their mother from killing again. It is a warning to the vulnerable that will cross her path when she is finally released in June 2022 from the Washington Corrections Center for Women. All worry that she will do it again.
About the author: Number 1 New York Times and Amazon Charts bestselling author Gregg Olsen has written more than thirty books, including Lying Next to Me, The Last Thing She Ever Did, and two novels in the Nicole Foster series, The Sound of Rain and The Weight of Silence. Known for his ability to create a vivid and fascinating narratives, he has appeared on multiple television and radio shows and news networks, such as Good Morning America, Dateline, Entertainment Tonight, CNN, and MSNBC.
In addition, Olsen has been featured in Redbook, People, and Salon magazine, as well as in the Seattle Times, Los Angeles Times, and New York Post. Both his fiction and nonfiction works have received critical acclaim and numerous awards, including prominence on the USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists. Washington State officially selected his young adult novel Envy for the National Book Festival and The Deep Dark was named Idaho Book of the Year.
A Seattle native who lives with his wife in rural Washington State, Olsen is already at work on his next thriller.
City Of Omens: A Search For The Missing Women Of The Borderlands by Dan Werb
Hardback: Perhaps the easiest way of making a town's acquaintance is to ascertain how the people in it work, how they love, and how they die. - Albert Camus, The Plague
For decades, American hungers sustained Tijuana. In this scientific detective story, a public health expert reveals what happens when a border city's lifeline is brutally severed.
Despite its reputation as a carnival of vice, Tijuana was, until recently, no more or less violent than neighbouring San Diego, its sister city across the border wall. But then something changed. Over the past ten years, Mexico's third-largest city became one of the world's most dangerous. Tijuana's murder rate skyrocketed and produced a staggering number of female victims. Hundreds of women are now found dead in the city each year, or bound and mutilated along the highway that lines the Baja coast.
When Dan Werb began to study these murders in 2013, rather than viewing them in isolation, he discovered that they could only be understood as one symptom among many. Environmental toxins, drug overdoses, HIV transmission: all were killing women at overwhelming rates. As an epidemiologist, trained to track epidemics by mining data, Werb sensed the presence of a deeper contagion targeting Tijuana's women. Not a virus, but some awful wrong buried in the city's social order, cutting down its most vulnerable inhabitants from multiple directions.
Werb's search for the ultimate causes of Tijuana's femicide casts new light on immigration, human trafficking, addiction, and the true cost of American empire-building. It leads Werb all the way from factory slums to drug dens to the corridors of police corruption, as he follows a thread that ultimately leads to a surprising turn back over the border, looking northward.
About the author: Dan Werb, PhD, is an assistant professor in epidemiology at the University of California San Diego and the University of Toronto. He has received major grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation and other organizations, and has authored dozens of scientific studies investigating HIV, drugs, and deportation in Tijuana. His journalism has appeared in publications such as the Believer and the Walrus, where his feature "The Fix," on new tactics for treating injection drug use, won a Canadian National Magazine Award. He is based in San Diego and Toronto.
Tuesday, 17 December 2019
The Leavers by Lisa Ko
Paperback: One morning, Deming Guo’s mother, an undocumented Chinese immigrant named Polly, goes to her job at the nail salon and never comes home. No one can find any trace of her.
With his mother gone, eleven-year-old Deming is left with no one to care for him. He is eventually adopted by two white college professors who move him from the Bronx to a small town upstate. They rename him Daniel Wilkinson in their efforts to make him over into their version of an “all-American boy.”
But far away from all he has ever known, Daniel struggles to reconcile his new life with his mother’s disappearance and the memories of the family and community he left behind.
Set in New York and China, The Leavers (2017) is a vivid and moving examination of borders and belonging. It is the story of how one boy comes into his own when everything he has loved has been taken away, and how a mother learns to live with the mistakes of her past.
This powerful debut is the winner of the 2016 PEN/Bellwether Prize for fiction, awarded by Barbara Kingsolver for a novel that addresses issues of social justice. It was a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award in Fiction, the 2017 Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Award and a finalist for the 2018 PEN/Hemingway Award.
The Leavers was named a best book of the year by NPR, Entertainment Weekly, BuzzFeed, The Los Angeles Times, Electric Literature, O, The Oprah Magazine, Paste Magazine, Irish Times, The Brooklyn Rail, Barnes and Noble, The Christian Science Monitor and Book of the Month Club Pick.
The Leavers was inspired by a 2009 New York Times story about an undocumented immigrant woman who was held, largely in solitary confinement, for more than a year and a half.
About the author: Lisa Ko is an American writer. She has been awarded fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and the MacDowell Colony, among others. She is a Spring 2020 Shearing Fellow at the Beverly Rogers, Carol C Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She has written for the New York Times. Born in Queens and raised in Jersey, she now lives in Brooklyn. For speaking engagements, contact speakersbureau@workman.com
Rating: 5/5
Truth To Power: 7 Ways To Call Time On BS (Politics/Activism) by Jess Phillips MP
Hardback: This is a POWERFUL little book.
Entertaining, empowering and uncompromising, it offers inspiration and practical help to people who want to speak out at a time when many of us feel the world isn't listening.
It will help you dig deep and speak up.
Speaking truth to power takes courage. Jess Phillips shows you how to identify the problem, form a plan, and to speak out using the exact same tools that those who have been put on a pedestal of being 'brave' have used to deal with the fear, the conflict and - let's be honest - the awkwardness that can come from telling your boss, your family, your neighbour that something is bullshit.
As well as offering inspiration and hope from her own experiences Jess talks to high-profile people on the world stage who have been brave enough to risk everything, become whistle-blowers and successfully fight back.
Truth to Power (2019) will help you change things. It will help you slam down that manager in the office you have tolerated for years; or tell your mate that you hate the way they talk about your husband or wife. It will help call out bullies in all walks of life. It will help you rally support and fight the fight against injustice - even though the odds seem stacked against you.
About the author: Jessica Rose Phillips was first elected as the Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley since 2015 and was elected chair of the Women's Parliamentary Labour Party in September 2016. Before becoming an MP, she worked with victims of domestic violence, sexual violence and human trafficking, and she continues to speak up on behalf of those who struggle to have their voice heard. Jessica lives with her husband and two sons in Birmingham, where she was born and raised.
Monday, 16 December 2019
Sunday, 15 December 2019
Saturday, 14 December 2019
Friday, 13 December 2019
School of Darkness by Bella V Dodd
Paperback: Bella Dodd ranks with Whittaker Chambers as a leading converted communist. Her testimony before investigating committees revealed the extent to which communist infiltration had taken place in America, particularly among teachers in schools and colleges. This record of her life describes how she came to be a member of the Communist Party, the reasons for her gradual disillusionment and final break with the party, and her eventual return to the Catholic Church into which she was born.
Her conversion to Communism was a slow usurpation of the mind by an appeal to love of humanity, a vision of a better society, and wider social justice. In time she became a member of the Party’s National Committee, and was intensely active in combating the Rapp-Coudert investigation of communist teachers, in supporting Loyalist Spain, and in the “united democratic front” maintained during World War II. But she was gradually repelled by the dictatorial methods of the Party and the constant struggle for power. Her divorce from her husband, and her own ill health speeded her estrangement from Party leaders and resulted in her expulsion from the Party in 1949.
Dodd’s re-entrance into the Catholic Church - which as a communist she had so bitterly attacked - was a natural result of her new state of mind. In the early 1950s, she provided detailed explanations of the Communist subversion of the Church, reporting that “in the 1930s we put eleven hundred men into the priesthood in order to destroy the Church from within, and that right now they are in the highest places in the Church.” From such positions they were working to bring about change in order to weaken the Church’s effectiveness against Communism. She said further that these changes would be so drastic that “you will not recognize the Catholic Church.”
Bella Dodd’s story is a human document of immense importance to Americans today. Here are the inner workings of the Communist Party in the United States in the early to mid-20th century as seen from the secret counsels and strategy meetings of the National Committee, to which she belonged for a crucial span of years.
The climax of the book is a snowy Christmas Eve when Bella finds the reaffirmation of her faith, and is able to say, “I have learned from bitter experience that you cannot serve man unless you first serve God in sincerity and truth.” Not being able to secure her baptismal certificate from Italy after inquiry, she was baptized by Bishop Fulton J Sheen in St Patrick’s Cathedral, New York.
School of Darkness (1954; reprint edition 2017) tells the story of how Bella Dodd left the Catholic Faith of her childhood to become a high-ranking member of the Communist Party USA, and later found her way back to the Church.
About the author: Bella Dodd (1904-1969) was a teacher, lawyer, and labour union activist, member of the Communist Party of America (CPUSA) and New York City Teachers Union (TU) in the 1930s and 1940s - "one of Communism's most strident voices" - and vocal anti-communist after her expulsion from the Party in 1949.
Thursday, 12 December 2019
Our Lady of Guadalupe: Mother of the Civilization of Love (Religion-Catholicism) by Carl Anderson and Msgr Eduardo Chávez
Hardback: Nearly a decade after Spain’s conquest of Mexico, the future of Christianity on the American continent was very much in doubt. Confronted with a hostile colonial government and Native Americans wary of conversion, the newly-appointed bishop-elect of Mexico wrote to tell the King of Spain that, unless there was a miracle, the continent would be lost. Between December 9 and December 12, 1531, that miracle happened, and it forever changed the future of the continent.
It was then that the Virgin Mary famously appeared to a Native American Christian convert on a hilltop outside of what is now Mexico City. The image she left imprinted on his cloak or tilma has puzzled scientists for centuries, and yet Our Lady of Gudalupe’s place in history is profound. A continent that just months before the apparitions seemed completely lost to Christianity suddenly and inexplicably embraced it by the millions. Our Lady of Guadalupe’s message of love replaced the institutionalized violence of the Aztec culture, and built a bridge between two worlds — the old and the new — that were just ten years earlier engaged in brutal warfare.
Today, Our Lady of Guadalupe continues to inspire the devotion of millions. From Canada to Argentina — and even beyond the Americas — one finds great devotion to her, and great appreciation for her message of love, unity and hope. Today reproductions of the Virgin’s miraculous image can be seen throughout North and South America, in churches and homes, on billboards and even clothing apparel. Her shrine in Mexico City, where the miraculous image is housed to this day, is one of the most visited in the world.
In Our Lady of Guadalupe: Mother of the Civilization of Love (2009), Anderson and Chávez trace the history of Our Lady of Guadalupe from the sixteenth century to the present and discuss how her message was and continues to be an important catalyst for religious and cultural transformation.
Looking at Our Lady of Guadalupe as a model of the Church and Juan Diego as a model for all Christians who seek to answer Christ’s call of conversion and witness, the authors explore the changing face of the Catholic Church in North, Central, and South America, and they show how Our Lady of Guadalupe’s message was not only historically significant, but how it speaks to contemporary issues confronting the American continents and people today.
About the authors: Sir Carl Albert Anderson is the thirteenth and current Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, the world’s largest Catholic family fraternal service organization, which has nearly 2 million members. Mr Anderson has had a distinguished career as a public servant and educator. In 1988, he became the founding vice president and first dean of the Washington, DC, session of this graduate school of theology now located at The Catholic University of America.
He is the author of the New York Times bestseller, A Civilization of Love: What Every Catholic Can Do To Transform The World; co-author (with Msgr Eduardo Chávez) of Our Lady of Guadalupe: Mother of the Civilization of Love, also a New York Times bestseller; co-editor (with Livio Melina) of The Way of Love: Reflections on Pope Benedict XVI's Encyclical Deus Caritas Est; co-author (with José Granados) Called to Love: Approaching John Paul II’s Theology of the Body; and author of Beyond a House Divided: The Moral Consensus Ignored by Washington, Wall Street and the Media.
Mr Anderson holds degrees in philosophy from Seattle University and in law from the University of Denver. He is a member of the bar of the District of Columbia and is admitted to practice law before the US Supreme Court. He and his wife, Dorian, are the parents of five children.
Father Eduardo Chávez is one of the most renowned experts on the Guadalupe apparitions and the postulator of St Juan Diego’s cause for sainthood. He is the first Dean of the Catholic University Lumen Gentium of the Archdiocese of Mexico, co-founder and Dean of the Higher Institute for Guadalupan Studies and honorary Canon of the Guadalupe Basilica.
Wednesday, 11 December 2019
Dark Chapter by Winnie M Li
Paperback: Vivian is a cosmopolitan Taiwanese-American tourist who often escapes her busy life in London through adventure and travel. Johnny is a 15-year-old Irish teenager, living a neglected life on the margins of society.
On a bright spring afternoon in West Belfast, their paths collide during a horrifying act of violence.
In the aftermath, each is forced to confront the chain of events that led to the attack.
Inspired by true events, Dark Chapter (2017) is a story of the dark chapters and chance encounters that can irrevocably determine the shape of our lives.
If you have been affected by this book, there are many resources out there, including:
UK: rapecrisis.org.uk or rapecrisisscotland.org.uk or 0808 802 9999
Ireland: rapecrisishelp.ie or 1 800 778888
About the author: Winnie M Li is a writer, producer, and activist. And frequent backpacker who has somehow managed to spend the past 20 years, engaged in storytelling and culture in various parts of the world.
Taiwanese-American and raised in New Jersey, Winnie studied Folklore and Mythology at Harvard, specializing in Celtic Languages and Literature. In 2000, she was selected as a George Mitchell Scholar and earned her MA in Anglo-Irish Literature at the National University of Ireland, Cork. While there, Winnie began volunteering for the Cork International Film Festival. Shortly afterwards, she moved to London to work for Ugly Duckling Films / Left Turn Films, a small independent film production company. Eventually as Head of Development there, Winnie was involved in producing six award-winning feature films and two shorts, one of which was Oscar-nominated® and the other Oscar-shortlisted®. In addition to overseeing script development at Ugly Duckling Films, Winnie concentrated heavily on the marketing, financing, and distribution of their projects.
Winnie’s career and life took a sudden turn in 2008, when she was followed by a stranger in a park outside Belfast and brutally raped. The case was widely covered by the local media. This prompted a long period of recovery, followed by a change of career.
After a few years in Qatar programming for the Doha Tribeca Film Festival and later in Singapore as a creative consultant on an eco-tourism project, Winnie ultimately decided to focus on writing. Her personal experience also led her to become an activist, focused on addressing the issue of sexual assault through the media, the arts, and academia.
She began writing her debut novel, Dark Chapter, while pursuing an MA in Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths, University of London. Inspired by her own assault, it explores a rape and its aftermath from the perspective of both victim and perpetrator. The novel went on to win The Guardian’s Not The Booker Prize 2017 by a combination of public vote and judging panel. It was also nominated for the Edgar Award in the US for Best First Novel and shortlisted for The Author’s Club Best First Novel Award. In its unpublished form, it was runner-up for the SI Leeds Literary Prize 2016 and the CWA Debut Dagger 2015. The book has been translated into ten languages.
Winnie is also Co-Founder and Artistic Director of the Clear Lines Festival, the UK’s first-ever festival addressing sexual assault and consent through the arts and discussion. Her PhD research at the London School of Economics explores media engagement by rape survivors as a form of activism. Winnie maintains an ongoing engagement with the media on the issue of sexual assault. She has appeared in The Guardian, The Chicago Tribune, The LA Review of Books, The Mail on Sunday, The Times, The Independent, The Irish Times, BBC World News, Channel 4 News, Channel 5 News, Sky News, and BBC Woman’s Hour, among other media outlets. In 2018, Winnie was conferred an honorary doctorate of law from the National University of Ireland, in recognition of her writing and activism.
Aside from novels, Winnie also enjoys writing articles, essays, memoir, travel and nature writing, and the occasional play. She remains an ardent fan of cinema. She is based in London but somewhat addicted to travel.
Rating: 5/5
Tuesday, 10 December 2019
The Heist (Gabriel Allon Series) by Daniel Silva
Paperback: Gabriel Allon, art restorer and occasional spy, searches for a stolen masterpiece by Caravaggio in #1 New York Times bestselling author Daniel Silva’s latest action-packed tale of high stakes international intrigue.
Sometimes the best way to find a stolen masterpiece is to steal another one.
Gabriel Allon – art restorer and legendary spy – is in Venice when he receives an urgent call from the Italian police. The art dealer Justin Isherwood has stumbled upon a chilling murder scene, and is being held as a suspect.
The dead man is a fallen spy with a secret – a trafficker in stolen artwork, sold to a mysterious collector. To save his friend, Gabriel must track down the world’s most iconic missing painting: Caravaggio’s Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence.
Gabriel’s mission takes him on exhilarating hunt from Marseilles and Corsica, to Paris and Geneva, and, finally, to a private bank in Austria, where a dangerous man stands guard over the ill-gotten wealth of one of the world’s most brutal dictators.
Master novelist Daniel Silva has thrilled readers with nineteen thoughtful and gripping spy novels featuring a diverse cast of compelling characters and ingenious plots that have taken them around the globe and back - from the United States to Europe, Russia to the Middle East. His brilliant creation, Gabriel Allon - art restorer, assassin, spy - has joined the pantheon of great fictional secret agents, including George Smiley, Jack Ryan, Jason Bourne, and Simon Templar.
Following the success of his smash hit The English Girl (2013), Daniel Silva returns with another powerhouse of a novel that showcases his outstanding skill and brilliant imagination, and is sure to be a must read for both his multitudes of fans and growing legions of converts.
The Heist (2012) is the fourteenth book in the outstanding Gabriel Allon spy series.
About the author: Daniel Silva was born in Michigan in 1960 and raised in California where he received his BA from Fresno State. Silva began his writing career as a journalist for United Press International (UPI), traveling in the Middle East and covering the Iran-Iraq war, terrorism and political conflicts. From UPI he moved to CNN, where he eventually became executive producer of its Washington-based public policy programming. In 1994, he began work on his first novel, The Unlikely Spy, a surprise best seller that won critical acclaim. He turned to writing full time in 1997 and all of his books have been New York Times/national best sellers, translated into 25 languages and published across Europe and the world. He lives in Washington, DC.
Rating: 5/5
The English Girl (Gabriel Allon Series) by Daniel Silva
Paperback: He who lives an immoral life dies an immoral death. - Corsican Proverb
Seven days. One girl. No second chances.
Madeline Hart is a rising star in Britain’s governing party: beautiful, intelligent, driven by an impoverished childhood to succeed. But she is also a woman with a dark secret: she is the lover of Prime Minister Jonathan Lancaster. Somehow, her kidnappers have learned of the affair, and they intend to make the British leader pay dearly for his sins. Fearful of a scandal that will destroy his career, Lancaster decides to handle the matter privately rather than involve the British police. It is a risky gambit, not only for the prime minister but also for the operative who will conduct the search.
You have seven days, or the girl dies.
Enter Gabriel Allon - master assassin, art restorer and spy - who is no stranger to dangerous assignments or political intrigue. With the clock ticking, Gabriel embarks on a desperate attempt to bring Madeline home safely. His mission takes him from the criminal underworld of Marseilles to an isolated valley in the mountains of Provence to the stately if faded corridors of power in London—and, finally, to a pulse-pounding climax in Moscow, a city of violence and spies where there is a long list of men who wish Gabriel dead.
From the novel’s opening pages until the shocking ending when the true motives behind Madeline’s disappearance are revealed, The English Girl (2013) will hold readers spellbound. It is a timely reminder that, in today’s world, money often matters more than ideology. And it proves once again why Daniel Silva has been called his generation’s finest writer of suspense and foreign intrigue.
The English Girl (2013) is the thirteen book in the outstanding Gabriel Allon spy series.
About the author: Daniel Silva was born in Michigan in 1960 and raised in California where he received his BA from Fresno State. Silva began his writing career as a journalist for United Press International (UPI), traveling in the Middle East and covering the Iran-Iraq war, terrorism and political conflicts. From UPI he moved to CNN, where he eventually became executive producer of its Washington-based public policy programming. In 1994, he began work on his first novel, The Unlikely Spy, a surprise best seller that won critical acclaim. He turned to writing full time in 1997 and all of his books have been New York Times/national best sellers, translated into 25 languages and published across Europe and the world. He lives in Washington, DC.
Rating: 5/5
Monday, 9 December 2019
Sunday, 8 December 2019
The Garden of the Holy Spirit: Saint Iakovos of Evia (1920-1991) by Professor Stylianos Papadopoulos
Paperback: My heart feels like a garden. - Saint Iakovos
From his earliest years Iakovos Tsalikis wanted to become a monk, but he would have to wait. The world had to get to know him and he had to get to know the world.
Born in Livísi, a picturesque village in Asia Minor, the Tsalikis family was forcibly uprooted from their ancestral homeland. Leaving the life they knew behind, they took with them what was their true life - their Faith. Resettled in Northern Evia, the future Saint was raised in piety and trained in virtue by his grandmother Despina and mother Theodora. Iakovos worked hard alongside his father, Stavros, and eventually became the provider for the family.
At the age of 32, he realized his calling in life by entering the Monastery of Saint David the Elder in Evia, living the rest of his life there as a monk. He rose above insurmountable obstacles, laboured ascetically beyond what is human and suffered greatly for the sake of Christ. He received divine gifts as his reward, including clairvoyance and miracle-working, becoming an Elder of great stature.
The author of this book, Professor Stylianos Papadopoulos, was blessed to know the Elder personally. His intimate knowledge of the Elder’s life together with his literary talent make the story on these pages come alive.
God has not left us without Saints in our age of falsehood and agnosticism. Saint Iakovos intercedes for us today, now glorified among the Saints in heaven. From the vivid, lively stories in The Garden of the Holy Spirit (2018), may we be moved to glorify God and ask Saint Iakovos to intercede for us!
The Garden of the Holy Spirit is originally translated from the Greek by Dr Dimitri Kagaris. Its revised translation is carried out by Anthony Hatzidakis. Translation of the miracle accounts in the introduction and conclusion is carried out by Fr Emmanuel Hatzidakis.
The book is also available as a Kindle book, and as an audio book.
About the author: Professor Stylianos Papadopoulos is a Professor of Patrology at the School of Theology of the National and Cappodistrian University of Athens.
The Beijing Conspiracy by Shamini Flint
Hardback: One man is caught up in a lethal global conspiracy in this explosive spy thriller, The Beijing Conspiracy (2019), by former corporate lawyer Shamini Flint.
"I need your support. There is no one else I can trust. Please help her. Please help our daughter."
When ex-Delta Force operator Jack Ford receives a letter containing news of a daughter he never knew he had, he feels compelled to return to China, a country he has not visited since 1989 when, as a young American spy, he fell in love with a beautiful student activist and found himself caught up in the horrors of the Tiananmen Square massacre. But why has Xia got in touch now, after a thirty-year silence?
On arrival in Beijing, Jack finds himself accidentally in possession of an explosive piece of information both the Chinese and American governments are desperate to get their hands on. Alone in a strange city, suspected of being a traitor by his own side, not knowing whom to trust, Jack is faced with an impossible dilemma: should he save his new-found daughter or prevent a new world war from breaking out?
About the author: Shamini Flint was born and brought up in Malaysia. Having studied law at Cambridge University, she travelled extensively throughout Asia for her work as a corporate lawyer, before giving it up to become a writer, part-time lecturer and environmental activist. Shamini now lives in Singapore with her husband and two children. She is the author of the highly acclaimed Inspector Singh mystery series.
Rating: 5/5
Saturday, 7 December 2019
Involuntary Witness (Guido Guerrieri Series) by Gianrico Carofiglio
Paperback: A nine-year-old boy is found murdered at the bottom of a well near a popular beach resort in southern Italy. In what looks like a hopeless case for Guido Guerrieri, counsel for the defence, a Senegalese peddler is accused of the crime. Faced with small-town racism fuelled by the recent immigration from Africa, Guido attempts to exploit the esoteric workings of the Italian courts.
More than a perfectly paced legal thriller, this relentless suspense novel transcends the genre. A powerful attack on racism, and a fascinating insight into the Italian judicial process, it is also an affectionate portrait of a deeply humane hero.
Involuntary Witness was published in 2002 and translated into English in 2005 by Patrick Creagh and has been adapted as the basis for a popular television series in Italy.
About the author: Gianrico Carofiglio, born in 1961, was an anti-Mafia prosecutor in the southern Italy city of Bari, Puglia, for many years. He has been responsible for some of the most important indictments in the region involving organized crime, corruption and the traffic in human beings. He is now a member of the Italian Senate. He has sold over 2.5 million books and Involuntary Witness, his debut novel and the first in a series with defence lawyer Guido Guerrieri, is in its 49th edition in Italy. It won numerous literary prizes and has been translated into eleven languages.
About the translator: Patrick Creagh (1930-2012) was a British poet, academic and translator.
Rating: 5/5
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