In Conversation With God - Daily Meditations Volume One: Advent and Christmastide by Father Francis Fernandez

Paperback: In Conversation with God - Volume 1 Part 1: Advent (2012, second edition) is now available for Kindle. It consists of 29 meditations for the whole of Advent and ends on Christmas Eve.

In Conversation with God - Volume 1 Part 2: Christmas and Epiphany (2012, second edition) will shortly become available separately as a companion volume. It consists of 22 meditations for the whole of Christmastide, up to and including the feast of the Baptism of the Lord, the First Sunday of Ordinary Time.

The complete work of In Conversation with God has more than 450 meditations for every day of the year. These meditations deal with the main topics of Christian doctrine and life.

Author Francis Fernandez-Carvajal makes generous use of the writings of the great saints as he brings you focused and moving meditations on themes taken from the Mass readings for that day, the liturgical season, and more. This work is rich and extensive enough to serve as your spiritual reading for a lifetime, as it helps you relate the particulars of the message of Christ to the ordinary circumstances of your day.

Each volume is small enough for you to carry it to Adoration or some other suitable place for meditation. The whole set comes with a handsome slipcase that prevents wear-and-tear on the individual volumes.

In Conversation With God is a translation of Hablar con Dios - Vol I first published in 1986 by Ediciones Palabra, Madrid, and in 1988 by Scepter with ecclesiastical approval.

About the author: Francis Fernández-Carvajal  was born in Granada in 1938. A graduate in History from the University of Navarre, he also holds a doctorate in Canon Law from the Angelicum in Rome. He is a priest of the Opus Dei Prelature. Since his ordination in 1964, much of his pastoral ministry has been with university students. For more than ten years, he has been Editor of the monthly magazine PALABRA. Among his published works are an Anthology of texts (with more than 600 quotations from spiritual writers throughout the ages), Lukewarmness - the Devil in Disguise, and Commentaries on the Gospels of St Matthew and St Luke.

Precious Vessels of the Holy Spirit: The Lives and Counsels of Contemporary Elders of Greece by Herman A Middleton

Paperback: For though ye have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel. Wherefore I beseech you, be ye followers of me. - 1 Corinthians 4:15-16

In an age searching for earthly solutions to spiritual problems, the ancient ministry of the God-bearing elder is a divine gift to contemporary man. Termed the “golden chain” by St Symeon the New Theologian, this life-giving ministry of the Church is a precious inheritance passed down from Christ, through the Apostles, from one generation to the next, to our own day. The lives and counsels contained in this volume attest to the continued vitality of this ancient ministry and to the importance of its preservation for the life of the Church today.

This volume includes a foreword by Georgios Mantzaridis, Professor Emeritus of the University of Thessalonica, extensive commentary providing the context for the lives and counsels therein, detailed maps, and a glossary of theological terms, making it an invaluable source of spiritual orientation and enlightenment for every seeker of Christian Orthodoxy.

Precious Vessels of the Holy Spirit (2011, third edition) is compiled, written, translated from the Greek, edited and with a preface, introduction, notes and glossary by Herman A Middleton.

About the author: Herman A Middleton received his doctorate in theology from the University of Tehssalonica, Greece.

Literacy Is Still The Path

S(h)elf Control

Forgive

The People And The Places And How The Weather Was

Thanksgiving

Life of St Anthony of Egypt by St Athanasius of Alexandria

Paperback: The biographic text of St Anthony is presented in this complete, unabridged edition for the reader's absorption and contemplation.

First published in the fourth century AD, Anthony the Great's biography was authored by Christian Saint Athanasius of Alexandria. Since its original release, the book has helped spread the beliefs, practices and arduous faith of Anthony the Great to a wider audience.

A significant progenitor of the monastic tradition, Saint Anthony lived an ascetic lifestyle in the deserts of Egypt. Although not the earliest of religious figures committed to this tradition, through his actions and preaching Anthony helped popularise and spread principles that would contribute heavily to the establishment of Christian monastic orders in Europe and beyond.

One famous event in St Anthony's life was his encounter with the supernatural in the remote reaches of the Egyptian desert. This occurrence, wherein the otherworldly presence tried to tempt him away from his spartan philosophy of living, has experienced much coverage in Western art and literature.

The translation to English contained in this edition is by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, both theologians who held Anthony the Great in high esteem.

This translation of Life of St Anthony of Egypt was first published in 1892.

About the author: St Athanasius, also called Saint Athanasius of Alexandria or Saint Athanasius the Apostolic, (born c. 293, Alexandria - died May 2, 373, Alexandria) is a theologian, ecclesiastical statesman, Egyptian national leader and doctor of the church. He was the chief defender of Christian orthodoxy in the 4th-century battle against Arianism, the heresy that the Son of God was a creature of like, but not of the same, substance as God the Father. His important works include The Life of St. Anthony, On the Incarnation, and Four Orations Against the Arians.

Reading Reflections

Murder on the Champ de Mars (Aimée Leduc Series) by Cara Black

Paperback: Paris, February 1998: Aimée Leduc has her work cut out for her - running her detective agency and fighting off sleep deprivation as she tries to be a good single mother to her new bebe. The last thing she has time for now is to take on a personal investigation for a poor manouche (French Gypsy) boy. But he insists his dying mother has an important secret she needs to tell Aimée, something to do with Aimée's father's unsolved murder a decade ago. How can she say no?

The dying woman's secret is even more dangerous than her son realized. When Aimée arrives at the hospital, the boy's mother has disappeared. She was far too sick to leave on her own - she must have been abducted. What does she know that is so important it is worth killing for? And will Aimée be able to find her before it is too late and the medication keeping her alive runs out?

Set in the seventh arrondissment, the quartier of the Parisian elite, Murder on the Champ de Mars takes us from the highest seats of power in the ministries and embassies through the city's private gardens and the homes of France's oldest aristocratic families. Aimée discovers more connections than she thought possible between the clandestine Gypsy world and the moneyed ancient regime, ultimately leading her to the truth behind her father's death.

After all, for Aimée, murder is never far from home.

Murder on the Champ de Mars (2015) is the fifteenth instalment in the excellent and enthralling PI Aimée Leduc series set in Paris, France.

About the author: Cara Black is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of 18 books in the Private Investigator Aimée Leduc series, which is set in Paris. Cara has received multiple nominations for the Anthony and Macavity Awards, a Washington Post Book World Book of the Year citation, the Médaille de la Ville de Paris - the Paris City Medal, which is awarded in recognition of contribution to international culture - and invitations to be the Guest of Honour at conferences such as the Paris Polar Crime Festival and Left Coast Crime. With more than 400,000 books in print, the Aimée Leduc series has been translated into German, Norwegian, Japanese, French, Spanish, Italian, and Hebrew.

Cara was born in Chicago but has lived in California’s Bay Area since she was five years old.

Her love of all things French was kindled by the French-speaking nuns at her Catholic high school, where Cara first encountered French literature and went crazy for the work of Prix Goncourt winner Romain Gary. Her junior year in high school, she wrote him a fan letter - which he answered, and which inspired her to make her first trip to Paris, where her idol took her out for coffee and a cigar. Since then, she has been to Paris many, many times. On each visit she entrenches herself in a different part of the city, learning its secret history. She has posed as a journalist to sneak into closed areas, trained at a firing range with real Paris flics, gotten locked in a bathroom at the Victor Hugo museum, and - just like Aimée - gone down into the sewers with the rats (she can never pass up an opportunity to see something new, even when the timing isn’t ideal - she was headed to a fancy dinner right afterwards and had a spot of bother with her shoes). For the scoop on real Paris crime, she takes the flics out for drinks and dinner to hear their stories - but it usually turns into a long evening, which is why she sticks with espresso.

Rating:  5/5

Many Rivers To Cross (An Alan Banks Crime Novel Series) by Peter Robinson

Hardback: The iconic DCI Banks is called into action for the twenty-sixth time in this breathlessly plotted double murder mystery involving immigration, drugs and gangland violence. Nobody can touch Robinson when it comes to scalpel-sharp police procedurals and Many Rivers to Cross is one of his very best. (Waterstones)

A skinny young boy is found dead - his body carelessly stuffed into wheelie bin. Detective Superintendent Alan Banks and his team are called to investigate. Who is the boy, and where did he come from? Was he discarded as rubbish, or left as a warning to someone? He looks Middle Eastern, but no one on the East Side Estate has seen him before.

As the local press seize upon an illegal immigrant angle, and the national media the story of another stabbing, the police are called to investigate a less newsworthy death: a middle-aged heroin addict found dead of an overdose in another estate, scheduled for redevelopment.

Banks finds the threads of each case seem to be connected to the other, and to the dark side of organised crime in Eastvale. Does another thread link to his friend Zelda, who is facing her own dark side? The truth may be more complex - or much simpler - than it seems.

Many Rivers To Cross (2019) is the twenty-sixth book in the masterful and superb Alan Banks crime novel series set in Yorkshire, England.

About the author: British by birth, crime novelist Peter Robinson moved to Canada after university and now divides his time between his home county of Yorkshire and Toronto. His first novel, Gallows View (1987), introduced his iconic series lead Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks and became the first novel in an enduringly popular series. Now running to 26 novels, the series - which celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2017 - has also inspired a popular television adaptation, DCI Banks, starring Stephen Tomkinson. He has also written two collections of short stories and three standalone novels, the most recent of which is the Number One bestseller Before The Poison (2011). The critically acclaimed crime novels have won numerous awards in Britain, the US, Canada and Europe, and are published in translation all over the world.

Rating:  5/5

Lies, Lies, Lies by Adele Parks

Paperback: Lies. They can make you. They can break you.

Daisy and Simon's marriage is great, isn't it?

After years together, the arrival of longed-for daughter Millie sealed everything in place. A happy little family of three.

And so what if Simon drinks a bit too much sometimes - Daisy's used to it, she knows he's letting off steam. Until one night at a party things spiral horribly out of control. And that happy little family of three will never be the same again.

In Lies, Lies, Lies (2019) Sunday Times bestseller Adele Parks explores the darkest corners of a relationship in freefall in a mesmerising tale of marriage and secrets.

About the author: Adele Parks was born in Teesside, NE England. She studied English Language and Literature, at Leicester University. She published her first novel, Playing Away, in 2000; that year the Evening Standard identified Adele as one of London’s ‘Twenty Faces to Watch.’ Indeed Playing Away was the debut bestseller of 2000.

Prolific, Adele has published nineteen novels in nineteen years, including Game Over, Tell Me Something and Love Lies, and all nineteen of her novels have been bestsellers. She has sold over three and a half million copies of her work in the UK but also sells throughout the world. Her books are translated into twenty-six languages. She has written numerous articles and short stories for many magazines and newspapers and often appears on radio and TV talking about her work.

She is an Ambassador for the National Literacy Trust and The Reading Agency's Six Book Challenge, a scheme that encourages emerging adult readers who are becoming passionate about books. In 2008, she wrote a Quick Read, Happy Families as part of the celebrations of World Book Day, which went on to win Quick Read Learners’ Favourite Award, as voted for by the public. Adele is also a judge for the Costa Book Awards and The British Book Awards.

All her novels examines issues that are important to us all. She likes to scrutinize concepts of family, theories on love, parenting and fidelity. Whatever period she sets her novels, she is known for examining the thorny issues of the lives people lead with her trademark, up-front, tell-it-as-it-is style.

In 2010 she was awarded an honorary doctorate of Letters from Teesside University. Adele has spent her adult life in Italy, Botswana and London, up until two years ago when she moved to Guildford, Surrey where she now lives with her husband, teenage son and cat.

Rating:  5/5

I Write When I Feel Like Writing

Binding People Together