Medjugorje: Fruits Of My Promise by Carmel Kelly

Paperback: There have been a number of books written over the years that tell the history of Medjugorje, but this town in Bosnia is more than the historical testament. 

Through 22 years of leading groups of pilgrims to this holy site, Carmel Kelly is uniquely qualified to tell a more spiritual story.

Carmel embarked on her first journey to Medjugorje in 1997 to fulfil a promise made to her beloved husband, Bill. 

This visit awakened a new surge of faith and inspired her to start bringing people to the shrine, so they could experience what she had first hand. 

From her first group pilgrimage, Carmel was amazed by the peace and conversions she was bearing witness to.

This book, completed shortly before her death, recounts the blessings Medjugorje bestows on believers and the positive impact the small village has on every pilgrim.

Thousands shared their journey with Carmel and she has shared some of the most poignant in turn. 

Whether you have already taken a journey to Medjugorje or are considering a pilgrimage, Medjugorje: Fruits Of My Promise (2021) will fill you with inspiration.

About the author: Carmel Kelly (1935-2020), born in Dublin, Ireland, was a Marian pilgrimage group leader. She graduated from Marino College with a degree in teaching. Fluent in German, Spanish, and French, Carmel loved to travel and did so throughout Europe in her early twenties, Lourdes being one of her first destinations. Her first full-time job was with Sisks as a secretary. This was where she met her husband Bill in 1960. They had 2 children together. 

In 1969, they emigrated to Australia. In 1982, the family finally decided to return to Ireland. After Bill's death, Carmel visited Medjugorje 110 times over 22 years, bringing thousands with her. 

When the lockdown came in 2020, Carmel did not rest. At the age of 85, she sat down and wrote this book and finished it just weeks before being admitted to hospital where she passed away.

Goals For 2022

Padre Pio: Encounters With A Spiritual Daughter From Pietrelcina by Graziella DeNunzio Mandato

Hardback: A saint within living memory, Padre Pio touched the lives of many by the simple faith with which he lived his life, praying, offering Mass, and reading souls. 

Among those inspired by the saint, Graziella DeNunzio Mandato was given the grace of living in San Giovanni Rotondo and receiving daily Communion and frequent confession from Padre Pio's pierced hands.  

In these pages, Graziella's firsthand account recalls Padre Pio's blessing on her marriage, the day her oldest two sons received their First Communion from his hands, and the fruits of his intercession before God for the family's immigration to America. 

Padre Pio adopted Graziella as a spiritual daughter, guiding her and interceding for her for the entirety of her life. 

While Graziella remained close to him in Italy, she attended his Masses, marvelling at the mystical experiences the Padre underwent throughout its various prayers. 

Even after her marriage and move to America, Padre Pio visited his spiritual daughter through dreams and a remarkable fragrance of sanctity. 

In this publication of Graziella's memoirs, her sons have compiled additional chapters reflecting on their mother's last earthly days and the spiritual fatherhood of Padre Pio. 

Padre Pio: Encounters With A Spiritual Daughter From Pietrelcina (2021) is a treasury of personal encounters with Padre Pio and a wealth of insight into the vibrant spirituality of an extraordinary saint. 

Graziella's newly expanded memoirs will lead readers to a more profound love of the Padre with a deep and abiding love for his children. This book includes over two dozen photographs of Graziella and her family, documenting their lives and their time spent with Padre Pio. 

 

About the author: Graziella DeNunzio Mandato was born in Italy in the village of Pietrelcina, in 1930, the same hometown of St Padre Pio. She grew up in an environment and a culture that was saturated by a vibrant Catholic Fatih that expressed great devotion and love for the Lord Jesus, for Our Lady and for the Catholic Church. Padre Pio, himself, was reared in this faith culture of simple poor peasants. 

Graziella, along with family members, were able to get rather close and intimate with San Pio while he lived in San Giovanni Rotondo. He guided her and led her throughout life. After marrying Andre, in 1955, at Padre Pio's counsel, they eventually emigrated to the USA and raised a Christian family. Graziella and Andre died six months apart in 2014. 

Powers And Thrones: A New History Of The Middle Ages By Dan Jones

Hardback: The New York Times bestselling author returns with an epic history of the medieval world - a rich and complicated reappraisal of an era whose legacy and lessons we are still living with today.

When the once-mighty city of Rome was sacked by barbarians in 410 and lay in ruins, it signalled the end of an era and the beginning of a thousand years of profound transformation. 

In a gripping narrative bursting with big names - from Saint Augustine and Attila the Hun to the Prophet Muhammad and Eleanor of Aquitaine, Dan Jones charges through the history of the Middle Ages. 

Powers and Thrones: A New History Of The Middle Ages (2021) takes readers on a journey through an emerging Europe, the great capitals of late Antiquity, as well as the influential cities of the Islamic West, and culminates in the first European voyages to the Americas.

The medieval world was forged by the big forces that still occupy us today: climate change, pandemic disease, mass migration, and technological revolutions. This was the time when the great European nationalities were formed; when the basic Western systems of law and governance were codified; when the Christian Churches matured as both powerful institutions and the regulators of Western public morality; and when art, architecture, philosophical inquiry and scientific invention went through periods of massive, revolutionary change.

The West was rebuilt on the ruins of an empire and emerged from a state of crisis and collapse to dominate the world. Every sphere of human life and activity was transformed in the thousand years covered by Powers and Thrones. 

As we face a critical turning point in our own millennium, Dan Jones shows that how we got here matters more than ever.

About the author: Dan Jones is an award-winning historian of the Middle Ages and the New York Times bestselling author of The Plantagenets and The Wars of the Roses. A charismatic television presenter, he has narrated Britain’s Bloodiest Dynasty, a four-part series based on The Plantagenets, as well as another series about castles in England and France. He is a columnist at the Evening Standard and has contributed to Newsweek, The Daily Beast, Smithsonian, and many other outlets.

The Dream of Europe: Travels In The Twenty-First Century by Geert Mak

Hardback: 'Mak is the history teacher everyone should have had.' - Financial Times

How did the great European dream turn sour? 

And where do we go from here?

From the author of the internationally acclaimed In Europe, The Dream of Europe (2021) is a stunning history of our present, examining the first two decades of this most fragile and fraught new millennium.

The great European project was built out of a common desire for peace, prosperity and freedom; a wish for a united Europe striving towards a common goal. The EU was to set an example: an arena for close cooperation, tackling crucial shared concerns from climate change to organized crime, promoting open borders and social security.

But the first two turbulent decades of this century have been times of rapid and profound change. 

From the shores of Lampedusa to Putin's Moscow, the continent threatens to tear itself apart. 

What has happened to Europe's optimism and euphoria? 

How has it given way to nostalgia, frustration and fear, the fragile European dream in danger of turning into a nightmare?

In The Dream of Europe, Geert Mak, one of Europe's best-loved commentators, charts the seismic events that have shaped people's lives over the past twenty years. Mak's monumental book, In Europe, defined the continent on the verge of a new millennium. The Dream of Europe brings us up to the present day, through the rocky expansion of the EU, the aftermath of 9/11 and terrorist attacks across Europe, the 2008 financial crash and the euro crisis, the tragedy of the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean, the rise of right-wing populism and Brexit.

Like no other, Mak blends history, politics and culture with the stories and experiences of the many Europeans he meets on his travels. He brings this continent to life, and asks what role does Europe play now, and how might we face our challenges together, in the spirit of solidarity and connection.

The Dream of Europe is translated from the Dutch by Liz Waters.

About the author: Geert Mak is a journalist and historian, and the internationally acclaimed author of In Europe, In America, Amsterdam and The Bridge. He is one of the Netherlands’ bestselling authors, has twice been awarded Historian of the Year and his books have been translated into more than 20 languages.

About the translator: Liz Waters worked for some years with English-language texts and at a literary agency in Amsterdam before becoming a full-time translator of literary fiction and nonfiction. Authors whose books she has translated include Lieve Joris, Jaap Scholten, Luuk van Middelaar, Douwe Draaisma, David Van Reybrouck and Geert Mak. Recently published translations are the novels Thirty Days by Annelies Verbeke and ‘A Foolish Virgin’ by Ida Simons.

A Drink At The Bar: A Memoir of Crime, Justice And Overcoming Personal Demons by Graham Boal QC

Hardback: A Drink at the Bar: A Memoir of Crime, Justice and Overcoming Personal Demons (2021) is the witty, opinionated and revealing memoirs of Judge Graham Boal QC, a criminal barrister for thirty years, before serving as a judge for nine years, until his retirement as a Permanent Judge at London's Central Criminal Court, the Old Bailey, in 2005. 

Boal's career highlights included his being the legendary George Carman's junior in the Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe's trial for conspiracy to murder in 1979, leading for the Crown at the Appeal of the Birmingham Six in 1991 and becoming First Senior Treasury Counsel. 

His memories of key cases in his career are fascinating but his day-to-day experiences, and the underlying legal issues and happenstance, are every bit as revealing and interesting.

Boal has been described as 'clubbable', a man who enjoys cricket, golf and life in a Norfolk village, but as his brilliant career progressed, he found himself increasingly dependent on the demon alcohol. He went into treatment for alcoholism and depression in 1993, and has been a recovering alcoholic ever since, including his years as a judge at the Old Bailey, the court at which most of the most serious criminal cases in the country are tried. 

This intriguing memoir reveals the many inside stories of classic criminal cases and the author is unstinting in his analysis of his professional achievements and personal struggles. This will be an essential read for all those interested in legal and political issues and the toll that the pressures of high office can put on one's personal life and wellbeing. 

About the author: Graham Boal QC was a criminal barrister for thirty years before serving as a judge for nine years until his retirement as a Permanent Judge at London’s Central Criminal Court, the Old Bailey, in 2005. 

The author is now a trustee and board member of Westminster Drug Project (WDP), a leading addiction charity.

End Of The Year Occupation

Merry Christmas And A Happy New Year 2021-2!

Growing-Up And Christmas

Vaxxers: The Inside Story Of The Oxford AstraZeneca Vaccine And The Race Against The Virus by Professor Sarah Gilbert and Dr Catherine Green with Deborah Crewe

Hardback: Vaxxers: The Inside Story Of The Oxford AstraZeneca Vaccine And The Race Against The Virus (2021) is a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week and a The Sunday Times Bestseller. It is chosen as a Book of the Year by the Financial Times, Sunday Times, Daily Mail, Prospect, Guardian and The Times.

This is the story of a race - not against other vaccines or other scientists, but against a deadly and devastating virus.

On 1 January 2020, Sarah Gilbert, Professor of Vaccinology at Oxford University, read an article about four people in China with a strange pneumonia. Within two weeks, she and her team had designed a vaccine against a pathogen that no one had ever seen before. Less than 12 months later, vaccination was rolled out across the world to save millions of lives from Covid-19.

In Vaxxers, we hear directly from Professor Gilbert and her colleague Dr Catherine Green as they reveal the inside story of making the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine and the cutting-edge science and sheer hard work behind it.

This is their story of fighting a pandemic as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. Sarah and Catherine share the heart-stopping moments in the eye of the storm; they separate fact from fiction; they explain how they made a highly effective vaccine in record time with the eyes of the world watching; and they give us hope for the future.

Vaxxers invites us into the lab to find out how science will save us from this pandemic, and how we can prepare for the inevitable next one.

About the authors: Sarah Gilbert is Professor of Vaccinology at the Jenner Institute within the University of Oxford. Having devoted her career to developing vaccines against infectious diseases, since January 2020, she has been the Oxford Project Leader for the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. Professor Gilbert has over 25 years of experience in the design and early development of new vaccines, and a commitment to increasing public understanding of science. In 2021, she was awarded a Damehood in the Queen’s Birthday Honours.

Dr Cath Green is Associate Professor in Chromosome Dynamics at the Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics, a Senior Research Fellow at Exeter College, and Head of Oxford University’s Clinical BioManufacturing Facility. As a specialist in manufacturing vaccines for clinical trials, she is an integral part of the Oxford Vaccine project. In 2021, she was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours.

Deborah Crewe is an experienced editor and ghostwriter. Most recently, she edited Sunday Times bestseller Blowing The Bloody Doors Off, working closely with international star and British legend Michael Caine. Before that she co-wrote the ideas book Factfulness with authors Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund. Factfulness is a New York Times bestseller, Sunday Times #1 bestseller, and was on Bill Gates’s and Barack Obama’s summer reading lists. It has sold over 600,000 copies internationally. Previous projects include Kind of Blue with Ken Clarke; Coming Up Trumps with Baroness Trumpington; and Last Man Standing with Jack Straw. Deborah is perceptive, efficient and discreet. Her work is consistently commended for its lucidity, its humour, and the authenticity of its voices.

Boxing Day 2021

It's That Time Of Year!

Five Straight Lines: A History Of Music by Andrew Gant

Hardback: Whether you prefer Baroque or pop, Theremins or violins, the music you love and listen to shapes your world. 

But what shaped the music?

Ranging across time and space, this book takes us on a grand musical tour from music's origins in prehistory right up to the twenty-first century. 

Charting the leaps in technology, thought and practice that led to extraordinary revolutions of music in each age, the book takes us through medieval Europe, Renaissance Italy and Jazz era America to reveal the rich history of music we still listen to today. 

From Mozart to McCartney, Schubert to Schoenberg, Professor Andrew Gant's Five Straight Lines: A History Of Music (2021) brings to life the people who made the music, their techniques and instruments, as well as the places their music was played, from sombre churches to rowdy taverns, stately courts to our very own homes.

About the author: Andrew Gant is a composer, choirmaster, university teacher and writer. He lectures in music at St Peter's College, Oxford, and has directed the choirs of The Guards' Chapel, Worcester College Oxford, and Her Majesty's Chapel Royal. He is the author of O Sing unto the Lord and Christmas Carols.

An Open Letter To Confused Catholics by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre

Paperback: An Open Letter To Confused Catholics (1985) is a popular study of the crisis in the Church written for all to understand. 

It covers the Mass, Sacraments, Priesthood, the New Catechisms, Ecumenism, etc, and demonstrates the new spirit in the Church which has caused doubt and confusion among the faithful. 

Archbishop Lefebvre also describes the negative consequences of false ecumenism.

The book has served as a beacon for thousands; certain to become a classic.

An Open Letter To Confused Catholics is translated from the French by Father M Crowdy.

About the author: Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre is a missionary priest, Archbishop of Dakar, Apostolic Delegate of the Holy See for French-speaking Africa, Superior General of the Holy Ghost Fathers, a member of the preparatory commission of Vatican Council II and finally founder of the Society of St Pius X. 

Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre is a great figure of the Church. He is remembered as the bishop who opposed the New Mass and the reforms of Vatican II. His entire life helps us to understand why.

Marcel Lefebvre was born in Tourcoing, in northern France, on 29 November 29 1905, the third of eight children. The five oldest would consecrate themselves to God: two priests and three sisters. Marcel was baptized the day after his birth. He received a deeply Catholic education within a pious, industrial middle class family. His father managed a wool spinning mill. He received his First Holy Communion on 25 December 1911. As a member of the Eucharistic Children’s Crusade, he became a Crusader in 1920.

Westminster Abbey: A Church in History edited by David Cannadine

Hardback: Westminster Abbey (2019) is a comprehensive and authoritative history that explores the significance of one of the most famous buildings and institutions in England, published by Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.

Westminster Abbey was one of the most powerful churches in Catholic Christendom before transforming into a Protestant icon of British national and imperial identity. 

Celebrating the 750th anniversary of the consecration of the current Abbey church building, this book features engaging essays by a group of distinguished scholars that focus on different, yet often overlapping, aspects of the Abbey's history: its architecture and monuments; its Catholic monks and Protestant clergy; its place in religious and political revolutions; its relationship to the monarchy and royal court; its estates and educational endeavours; its congregations; and its tourists. 

Clearly written and wide-ranging in scope, this generously illustrated volume is a fascinating exploration of Westminster Abbey's thousand-year history and its meaning, significance, and impact within society both in Britain and beyond.

About the author: David Cannadine is president of the British Academy and Dodge Professor of History at Princeton University.

Padre Pio: Stories And Memories Of My Mentor And Friend by Fr Gabriel Amorth

Paperback: This colourful memoir offers a rare, up-close glimpse of the life and personality of St Pio of Pietrelcina, the beloved Italian monk who was blessed with extraordinary gifts.

The late Fr Amorth - well-known as an exorcist - enjoyed over two decades of a close friendship with the holy, quirky Padre Pio, whom he considered his spiritual father. 

Adding his own personal experience to a foundation of biographical research, Amorth gives an entertaining and illuminating account of perhaps one of the best-known saints of the twentieth century.

In this book, we span from Padre Pio's childhood - where he cured himself of a disease by wolfing down all his mother's fried bell peppers - to his miracle-filled priesthood, to his Italian gift for mimicry, humour, and storytelling.

Rather than a plaster image of a saint, Padre Pio: Stories And Memories Of My Mentor And Friend (2021) by Fr Gabriel Amorth is a portrait of a fully human kind of holiness, proof that even the most astonishing graces can be lived out with simplicity and joy.

It is translated from the Italian Padre Pio: Breve storia di un santo (2016) by Matthew Sherry.

About the author: Gabriele Amorth (1925-2016), a priest of the Congregation of San Paolo, was the chief exorcist at the Vatican and internationally recognized as the world's foremost exorcist. Two of his major books are An Exorcist Tells His Story and An Exorcist: More Stories.

Translator's Note: As much as I enjoyed seeing Padre Pio in a new light, one of the nicer surprises in translating this book was Fr Amorth's talent as a writer. The man knew how to tell a story. He also knew how not to be a stickler when it comes to trivia. This is not an academic biography and he makes a few mistakes on things like names and dates, just enough to keep the fingerpointers happy. I have noted some of these errors with footnotes and brackets, but they are generally unimportant. Fr Amorth knew Padre Pio better than any Pio scholar could. He writes from over twenty-five years of friendship. Readers who want food for heart and soul will be happy to have found this book. - Matthew Sherry, 10 March 2021

China Unbound: A New World Disorder by Joanna Chiu

Paperback: From Hong Kong to Russia to Australia, an award-winning foreign correspondent chronicles the human consequences of China's dramatic moves to become the dominant power.

As the world’s second-largest economy, China is extending its influence across the globe with the complicity of democratic nations.

Joanna Chiu has spent a decade tracking China’s propulsive rise, from the political aspects of its multi-billion-dollar “New Silk Road” global investment project to its growing sway over foreign countries and multilateral institutions through “United Front” efforts.

For too long, Western societies have mishandled or simply ignored Beijing’s actions, out of narrow self-interest. 

Over time, Chiu argues, decades of wilful misinterpretation have become harmful complicity in the toxic diplomacy, human rights abuses and foreign interference seen from China today.

Engaging chapters transport readers to a frozen lake in Russia, protests in Hong Kong, underground churches in Beijing, and exile Uyghur communities in Turkey, exposing Beijing’s high-tech surveillance and aggressive measures, which result in human rights violations against those who challenge its power.

The new world disorder documented in China Unbound: A New World Disorder (2021) lays out its disturbing implications for global stability, prosperity, and civil rights everywhere. 

About the author: Joanna Chiu is senior journalist for the Toronto Star, Canada’s largest newspaper, and the author of China Unbound: A New World Disorder. Chiu has previously served as bureau chief of the Star Vancouver. 

As a globally-recognized authority on China, the author of China Unbound is a commentator for international broadcast media and was previously based for seven years in Beijing and in Hong Kong as a foreign correspondent, including for Agence France Presse (AFP) specializing in coverage of Chinese politics, economy and legal affairs for one of the world’s biggest news operations.

Just Anger

The House of Gucci: A Sensational Story Of Murder, Madness, Glamour, And Greed by Sara Gay Forden

Paperback: The House of Gucci (2001, 2021 movie tie-in) is the sensational true story of murder, madness, glamour, and greed that shook the Gucci dynasty.

On 27 March 1995, Maurizio Gucci, heir to the fabulous fashion dynasty, was slain by an unknown gunman as he approached his Milan office. 

In 1998, his ex-wife Patrizia Reggiani Martinelli - nicknamed "The Black Widow" by the press - was sentenced to 29 years in prison, for arranging his murder.

Did Patrizia murder her ex-husband because his spending was wildly out of control? 

Did she do it because her glamorous ex was preparing to marry his mistress, Paola Franchi? 

Or is there a possibility she did not do it at all?

The Gucci story is one of glitz, glamour, intrigue, the rise, near fall and subsequent resurgence of a fashion dynasty. Beautifully written, impeccably researched, and widely acclaimed, The House of Gucci will captivate readers with its page-turning account of high fashion, high finance, and heart-rending personal tragedy.

The House of Gucci is now a major motion picture from director Ridley Scott, starring Lady Gaga and Adam Driver.

About the author: Sara Gay Forden covered the Italian fashion industry from Milan for more than fifteen years, chronicling the explosion of labels including Gucci, Armani, Versace, Prada and Ferragamo from family ateliers into mega brands. She is now based in Washington, DC with Bloomberg News, leading a team that covers lobbying and the challenges faced by big technology companies such as Amazon, Facebook and Google.

My Choice: The Ethical Case Against COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates by Dr Julie Ponesse

Paperback/E-Book: In the fall of 2021, Dr Julie Ponesse saw her academic career of 20 years fall apart after she refused a Canadian university's COVID vaccine mandate. 

My Choice: The Ethical Case Against COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates (2021) is her account of the battle and its aftermath, written with passion and intelligence. Dr Ponesse's story travels beyond the personal and examines the ethical and philosophical dimensions of our pandemic response.

If there is anyone out there who feels alone in the struggle to preserve personal choice and freedom, this book offers some very human advice on how to move forward and makes it clear that your voice deserves to be heard.

About the author: Julie Ponesse has a PhD in Philosophy (Western, 2008) with areas of specialization in ethics and ancient philosophy. She has a Masters in Bioethics from the Joint Centre for Bioethics at the University of Toronto and a Diploma in Ethics from the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University. She has published in the areas of ancient philosophy, ethical theory, and applied ethics, and has taught at universities in Canada and the US for 20 years.

Socks Or Books?

A Man Who Lies

Blood and Ruins: The Great Imperial War, 1931-1945 by Richard Overy

Hardback: Blood and Ruins: The Great Imperial War, 1931-1945 (2021) is a bold new approach to the Second World War from one of Britain's foremost military historians

Richard Overy sets out in Blood and Ruins to recast the way in which we view the Second World War and its origins and aftermath. He argues that this was the 'great imperial war', a violent end to almost a century of global imperial expansion which reached its peak in the ambitions of Italy, Germany and Japan in the 1930s and early 1940s, before descending into the largest and costliest war in human history and the end, after 1945, of all territorial empires.

How war on a huge scale was fought, supplied, paid for, supported by mass mobilization and morally justified forms the heart of this new account. 

Above all, Overy explains the bitter cost for those involved in fighting, and the exceptional level of crime and atrocity that marked these imperial projects, the war and its aftermath. This war was as deadly for civilians as it was for the military, a war to the death over the future of the global order.

Blood and Ruins is a masterpiece from of one of the most renowned historians of the Second World War, which will compel us to view the war in novel and unfamiliar ways. Thought-provoking, original and challenging, Blood and Ruins sets out to understand the war anew.

About the author:  Richard Overy is Professor in History at the University of Exeter. He is the author of books on the Second World War, the European dictatorships and the history of air power. His latest titles include The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia (2004) and The Morbid Age: Britain Between the Wars (2009). He is a fellow of the British Academy and winner of the Wolfson History Prize in 2005.

Devil-Land: England Under Siege, 1588-1688 by Clare Jackson

Hardback: Devil-Land: England Under Siege 1588-1688 (2021) is a ground-breaking portrait of the most turbulent century in English history.

Among foreign observers, seventeenth-century England was known as 'Devil-Land': a diabolical country of fallen angels, torn apart by seditious rebellion, religious extremism and royal collapse. 

Clare Jackson's dazzling, original account of English history's most turbulent and radical era tells the story of a nation in a state of near continual crisis.

As an unmarried heretic with no heir, Elizabeth I was regarded with horror by Catholic Europe, while her Stuart successors, James I and Charles I, were seen as impecunious and incompetent, unable to manage their three kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland. The traumatic civil wars, regicide and a republican Commonwealth were followed by the floundering, foreign-leaning rule of Charles II and his brother, James II, before William of Orange invaded England with a Dutch army and a new order was imposed.

Devil-Land reveals England as, in many ways, a 'failed state': endemically unstable and rocked by devastating events from the Gunpowder Plot to the Great Fire of London. Catastrophe nevertheless bred creativity, and Jackson makes brilliant use of eyewitness accounts - many penned by stupefied foreigners - to dramatize her great story. 

Starting on the eve of the Spanish Armada's descent in 1588 and concluding with a not-so 'Glorious Revolution' a hundred years later, Devil-Land is a spectacular reinterpretation of England's vexed and enthralling past.

About the author: Dr Clare Jackson is the Senior Tutor of Trinity Hall, Cambridge University. She has presented a number of highly successful programmes on the Stuart dynasty for the BBC and is the author of Charles II in the Penguin Monarchs series.

Devil-Land is a Book of the Year 2021, as chosen by The Times, New Statesman, Telegraph and Times Literary Supplement. 

The Devil's Atlas: An Explorer's Guide to Heavens, Hells And Afterworlds by Edward Brooke-Hitching

Hardback: Edward Brooke-Hitching, author of the international bestseller, The Phantom Atlas, delivers an atlas unlike any other. 

The Devil’s Atlas (2021) is an illustrated guide to the heavens, hells and lands of the dead as imagined throughout history by cultures and religions around the world. Packed with colourful maps, paintings and captivating stories, the reader is taken on a compelling tour of the geography, history and supernatural populations of the afterworlds of cultures around the globe.

Whether it is the thirteen heavens of the Aztecs, the Chinese Taoist netherworld of ‘hungry ghosts’, or the ‘Hell of the Flaming Rooster’ of Japanese Buddhist mythology (in which sinners are tormented by an enormous fire-breathing cockerel), The Devil’s Atlas gathers together a wonderful variety of beliefs and representations of life after death. 

These afterworlds are illustrated with an unprecedented collection of images, ranging from the marvellous ‘infernal cartography’ of the European Renaissance artists attempting to map the structured Hell described by Dante and the decorative Islamic depictions of Paradise to the various efforts to map the Garden of Eden and the spiritual vision paintings of nineteenth-century mediums.

The Devil’s Atlas accompanies beautiful images with a highly readable trove of surprising facts and narratives, from the more inventive torture methods awaiting sinners, to colourful eccentric catalogues of demons, angels and assorted death deities. 

A traveller’s guide to worlds unseen, The Devil’s Atlas is a fascinating study of the boundless capacity of human invention, a visual chronicle of man’s hopes, fears and fantasies of what lies beyond.

About the author: Edward Brooke-Hitching is the author of the critically acclaimed and bestselling books The Phantom Atlas (2016), The Golden Atlas (2018), The Sky Atlas (2019), The Madman's Library (2020) and The Devil's Atlas (2021), all of which have been translated into numerous languages; he is also the author of Fox Tossing, Octopus Wrestling and Other Forgotten Sports (2015). He is a writer for the BBC series QI. 

A fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and an incurable cartophile, he lives surrounded by dusty heaps of old maps and books in Berkshire.

Friendship

Writing Is So Hard

In Black And White by Alexandra Wilson

Paperback: Alexandra Wilson was a teenager when her dear family friend Ayo was stabbed on his way home from football.

Ayo’s death changed Alexandra. His death compelled her to enter the legal profession to search for answers. As a junior criminal and family law barrister she finds herself navigating a world and a set of rules designed by a privileged few.

In her debut book In Black and White, Alexandra beautifully re-creates the tense court room scenes, the heart-breaking meetings with teenage clients and the moments of frustration and triumph that make up a young barrister’s life.

Alexandra speaks with raw honesty about her experience as a mixed-race woman from a non-traditional background in a profession that is sorely lacking in diverse representation. A justice system in which a disproportionately large number of black and mixed-race people are charged, convicted and sent to prison.

She shows us how it feels to defend someone who hates the colour of your skin or someone you suspect is guilty, and the heart-breaking youth justice cases she has worked on. We see what it’s like for the teenagers coerced into county line drug deals and the damage that can be caused when we criminalise teenagers.   

Her account of what she has witnessed as a young mixed-race barrister is in equal parts shocking, compelling, confounding and powerful.  

Alexandra’s story is unique in a profession still dominated by a section of society with little first-hand experience of the devastating impact of violent crime.  

In Black and White (2020) is a young barrister’s story of race and class in a broken justice system.

About the author: Alexandra Wilson is a barrister specialising in criminal and family law at 5SAH Chambers. In her criminal law practice, she represents a variety of clients charged with serious matters and specialises in young and vulnerable clients. Her family law practice includes private children, public children, domestic abuse and finance cases.

Alexandra Wilson was a teenager when a close family friend was stabbed to death on his way home from football. His death compelled her to enter the legal profession to search for answers and make a difference. She studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics at the University of Oxford and and was awarded two prestigious scholarships, enabling her to research the impact of police shootings in the US on young people’s attitudes to the police.

Alexandra studied for a Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL) and her Master of Laws at BPP University in London. She was awarded the first Queen’s scholarship by the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, awarded to students showing exceptional promise in a career at the Bar. She specialises in children and finance law, particularly cases with an international element and has a busy practice in family law, which includes private children, public children, domestic abuse and finance cases.

Alexandra’s criminal practice is in the Magistrates’, Youth and Crown Courts. She has recently secured acquittals for clients charged with domestic assaults and public order offences. She specialises in young and vulnerable clients in her criminal practice and has represented a variety of clients in criminal cases charged with serious matters.

Alexandra is the founder of Black Women In Law, an organisation with over 500 members. She also co-founded One Case At A Time, an organisation set up to assist disenfranchised minorities in the legal process.

Alexandra grew up on the border of East London and Essex. She is the eldest of four children with a White British mother and Black British father. Her paternal grandparents were born in Jamaica and came to England as part of the Windrush generation.

Alexandra’s best-selling debut book In Black and White, tells the story of her early legal career, recreating tense courtroom scenes, heart-breaking meetings with teenage clients and moments of frustration and triumph that make up a young barrister’s life.

Her Twitter and Instagram are under the handle: @essexbarrister

Prison Journal, Volume 2: The State Court Rejects the Appeal by Cardinal George Pell

Paperback: Innocent! 

That final verdict came after George Cardinal Pell endured a gruelling four years of accusations, investigations, trials, public humiliations, and more than a year of imprisonment after being convicted by an Australian court of a crime he did not commit.

Led off to jail in handcuffs, following his sentencing on 13 March 2019, the 78-year-old Australian prelate began what was meant to be six years in jail for "historical sexual assault offenses". Cardinal Pell endured more than thirteen months in solitary confinement, before the Australian High Court voted 7-0 to overturn his original convictions. His victory over injustice was not just personal, but one for the entire Catholic Church.

Bearing no ill will toward his accusers, judges, prison workers, journalists, and those harbouring and expressing hatred for him, the cardinal used his time in prison as a kind of "extended retreat". He eloquently filled notebook pages with is spiritual insights, prison experiences, and personal reflections on current events both inside and outside the Church, as well as moving prayers.

In this second (2021) of three volumes, spanning a period from 14 July 2019 to 30 November 2019, Cardinal Pell receives the terrible news that his first appeal is rejected. With the same grace, wisdom, and calm perseverance we see on display in Volume 1 (2020), he continues his quest for justice by appealing to the Australian High Court. 

Glimmers of hope emerge as more legal experts, including non-Catholics, join the chorus of those demanding that this miscarriage of justice be reversed.

About the author: George Cardinal Pell, formerly Archbishop of Sydney (2001–2014) and of Melbourne (1996­–2001), Australia, was appointed in 2014 by Pope Francis as Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy at the Vatican. He also served on Pope Francis' Council of Cardinals. Cardinal Pell received a Licentiate of Sacred Theology from the Urbanianum University in Rome, and his DPhil in Theology from the University of Oxford. His previous books include Test Everything and Issues of Faith and Morals.

One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Paperback: "On one long winter workday in camp, as I was lugging a handbarrow together with another man, I asked myself how one might portray the totality of our camp existence. In essence, it should suffice to give a thorough description of a single day, providing minute details and focusing on the most ordinary kind of worker; that would reflect the entirety of our experience. It wouldn’t even be necessary to give examples of any particular horrors. It shouldn’t be an extraordinary day at all, but rather a completely unremarkable one, the kind of day that will add up to years. That was my conception, and it lay dormant in my mind for nine years." - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

From 1950 to 1953, Solzhenitsyn was imprisoned in the forced-labor camp of Ekibastuz in Kazakhstan. Prisoners here were stripped of their names and were addressed by the identifying number inscribed on patches sewn to their caps, chest, back, and knee. The writer was assigned to a masonry brigade, then to a foundry, and this is the camp described in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1963).

In May 1959, when Solzhenitsyn was living in Ryazan, he finally sat down to write Щ-854 (One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich). He wrote it and put it away. He risked offering it for publication only some two years later, after Khrushchev’s vociferous attack on Stalin’s “cult of personality” at the Twenty-second Party Congress. 

He sent the manuscript, still titled Щ-854, to the Moscow journal Novy Mir in the fall of 1961. The editor of the journal’s prose section, Anna Berzer, was quick to grasp the significance of the unusual submission, and passed it on to Novy Mir’s editor-in-chief, Aleksandr Tvardovsky, with the remark that it was about “a prison camp though the eyes of a peasant, a very national kind of work.” 

This brutal, shattering glimpse of the fate of millions of Russians under Stalin shook Russia and shocked the world when it first appeared. Discover the importance of a piece of bread or an extra bowl of soup, the incredible luxury of a book, the ingenious possibilities of a nail, a piece of string or a single match in a world where survival is all. Here safety, warmth and food are the first objectives. Reading it, you enter a world of incarceration, brutality, hard manual labour and freezing cold - and participate in the struggle of men to survive both the terrible rigours of nature and the inhumanity of the system that defines their conditions of life.

Bringing into harsh focus the daily struggle for existence in a Soviet gulag, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is first published in the Soviet Union in 1963 and its first translation published by Victor Gollancz Ltd in 1962. Subsequently, it was published in Penguin Books in 1963 and reprinted in Penguin Classics in 2000. It is translated from the Russian by Ralph Parker in Penguin Modern Classics.

If you enjoyed One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, you might also like Yevgeny Zamyatin's We, available in Penguin Classics.

About the author: Though twice-decorated for his service at the front during the Second World War, Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) was arrested in 1945 for making derogatory remarks about Stalin, and sent to a series of brutal Soviet labour camps in the Arctic Circle, where he remained for eight years. Released after Stalin's death, he worked as a teacher, publishing his novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich with the approval of Nikita Khrushchev in 1962, to huge success. His 1967 novel Cancer Ward, as well as his magnum opus The Gulag Archipelago, were not as well-received by Soviet authorities, and not long after being awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1970, Solzhenitsyn was deported from the USSR. In 1994, after twenty years in exile, Solzhenitsyn made his long-awaited return to Russia.

Of his works, Penguin also publish August 1914 and November 1916, both being the first and second volumes of The Red Wheel. 

Couples, Awaken Your Love! by Robert Cardinal Sarah

Paperback: With the luminous insight that we have come to expect from his writings, Robert Cardinal Sarah helps spouses rediscover the deep source of their love - God Himself - and the means for letting love between them grow.

Couples, Awaken Your Love! (2021) presents the essentials of a retreat that the cardinal preached to married couples in Lourdes, France. It is meant for all couples, including those who are struggling. There is a path to renewal for everyone, and couples in every situation can find again the preciousness of the love that binds them, no matter how hidden it may be.

We are all, without exception, called to joy, and Christ alone can give it to us. 

He works through his Church, through the sacraments, and through his saints - especially Mary, the Mother of God, who heals couples.

Couples, Awaken Your Love! is translated from the French (Couples, réveillez votre amour!, 2020) by Michael J Miller.

About the author: Robert Cardinal Sarah (1945- ) was born in Guinea, West Africa. Made an Archbishop by Pope John Paul II and a Cardinal by Pope Benedict XVI, he was named the Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments by Pope Francis in 2014. He is the author of God or Nothing (2015), La force du silence (2016), The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise (2017), The Day is Now Far Spent (2019), From the Depths of Our Hearts: Priesthood, Celibacy and the Crisis of the Catholic Church (2020) and Pour l’éternité: Méditations sur la figure du prêtre (2021).

On The Shortness Of Life by Seneca

Paperback: On The Shortness of Life (2018) is the timeless advice on the art of living well, published by Benediction Classics. 

The writings of the ancient Roman philosopher Seneca offer powerful insights into stoicism, morality and the importance of reason, and continue to provide profound guidance to many through their eloquence, lucidity and wisdom.

Throughout history, some books have changed the world. 

They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. 

They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. 

They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. 

They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. 

About the author: Lucius Annaeus Seneca, statesman, philosopher, advocate and man of letters, was born in Spain around 4BC. He rose to prominence at Rome, pursuing a double career in the courts and political life, until Claudius sent him into exile on the island of Corsica for eight years. Recalled in AD49, he was appointed tutor to the boy who was to become, in AD54, the emperor Nero. 

Seneca acted for eight years as Nero's unofficial chief minister until Nero too turned against him and he retired from public life to devote himself to philosophy and writing. In AD65, following the discovery of a plot against the emperor, he and many others were compelled by Nero to commit suicide.