The Curé d'Ars: St Jean-Marie Baptiste Vianney by Abbé François Trochu

Paperback: From my seminary years, I had been impressed by the figure of the Curé d'Ars, especially after reading his biography by Monsignor Trochu. St John Marie Vianney astonishes us because in him we can see the power of grace working through human limitations. - Pope John Paul II, Gift and Mystery

Around 1830, the village of Ars began attracting huge crowds of visitors each day. Why did thousands of pilgrims come daily to this small village? The pilgrims had no other purpose than to meet its parish priest and especially to have him hear their confession. For this, they waited for hours, sometimes all night! 

His exceptional holiness and numerous miracles irresistibly attracted men and women of all ages and walks of life in search of the truth. This priest was Jean-Marie-Baptiste Vianney (1786-1859). He lived in extreme austerity and he made his village a fervent and exemplary community. Long before his death in 1859, he was the most famous priest in France. He is now considered the Patron and exemplar of priests worldwide.

This classic and comprehensive biography written by Abbé François Trochu reveals how Jean-Marie-Baptiste Vianney overcame numerous obstacles to becoming a priest. He exercised intense simplicity, humility and pastoral zeal to help him transform a miserable village disaffected with religion into a town attracting thousands of pilgrims a year. 

Canonized in 1925 by Pope Pius XI, during the 150th anniversary of his death in 2009, The Year of the Priest was launched by Pope Benedict XVI to renew priestly sanctity all over the world.

The Curé d'Ars (1927, 2013) is translated from the French by Dom Ernest Graf OSB of St Mary's Abbey, Buckfast in Devon. 

About the author: Abbé François Trochu is the author of the biographies The Curé d'Ars: St Jean-Marie-Baptiste Vianney and St Bernadette Soubirous. His work on the Curé d'Ars was originally published in 1927 by Burns, Oates and Washbourne. In this definitive biography, Abbé Trochu compiled a great number of extraordinary facts about the saint, based on his life and vocation, according to the Acts of the Process of Canonisation and numerous hitherto unpublished documents. It presents a vivid and accurate picture of one of the most beloved saints of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The Secret Diary Of Élisabeth Leseur: The Woman Whose Goodness Changed Her Husband From Atheist to Priest by Élisabeth Leseur

Paperback: This inspiring book gives you a splendid example of how to live as a Christian in a secular environment that can be indifferent or hostile to your Faith. For Elisabeth Leseur had two great loves: God, and her husband Felix. Felix loved Élisabeth as well; yet to their mutual sorrow, he could not share the life of the Spirit that Élisabeth cherished.

Occasionally the happiness of their life together in upper-class Parisian society was shattered by Felix’s frustration and impatience. How could such an intelligent woman waste her time, as he saw it, with ignorant superstitions? Sometimes he and his friends would even ridicule and mock her faith.

But Élisabeth loved Felix too much to allow their home to degenerate into an emotional war zone. She realized that confrontations and arguments were useless; she chose instead to keep quiet and pray for Felix. In her secret diary, she recorded how she used his efforts to destroy her faith as means to grow in love for him and for God.

Throughout their life together, it grieved Élisabeth to think that Felix might be separated from her for all eternity because of his rejection of God. For her, life in Heaven would not be happy without him. Yet when she died prematurely, Felix was still an unbeliever.

The story does not end there. When Felix found this diary, he discovered how Élisabeth’s whole life bore witness to the truth of the God she loved.

In time, Felix was transformed by the diary and his memories of Élisabeth. He became a Christian and, later, a priest. Now she may even be declared a saint. 

Élisabeth’s diary (2002) and spiritual writings (all included in this one volume) map out for you a path to marital harmony and greater love for God especially if you love someone who stands outside the Faith. The Secret Diary of Élisabeth Leseur (Journal et de pensées chaque jour) is a combined edition of My Spirit Rejoices (1996) and Light in the Darkness (1998). 

About the author: Élisabeth Arrighi Leseur (1866-1914), born Pauline Élisabeth Arrighi, was a French mystic best known for her spiritual diary and the conversion of her husband, Félix Leseur (1861–1950), a medical doctor and well known leader of the French anti-clerical, atheistic movement. From the beginning, she organized her spiritual life around a disciplined pattern of prayer, meditation, reading, sacramental practice, and writing. Charity was the organizing principle of her asceticism. In her approach to mortification, she followed Saint Francis de Sales who recommended moderation and internal, hidden strategies instead of external practices.

The cause for the beatification of Élisabeth Leseur was started in 1934. Her current status in the process is that of a Servant of God. At the urging of Felix and others, the Church initiated the process for Élisabeth's canonization. World War II and Felix's declining health soon interrupted these efforts. In 1990, the Church reopens the cause for Élisabeth's canonization. 

Miracle Creek by Angie Kim

Paperback: How far will you go to protect your family? Will you keep their secrets? Ignore their lies?

My husband asked me to lie. Not a big lie. He probably didn’t even consider it a lie, and neither did I, at first.

In a small town in Virginia, a group of strangers come together at a special treatment center, where they enter the Miracle Submarine, an experimental oxygen chamber that may cure a range of conditions - from fertility to autism. Then the chamber  explodes and two people die. Who is responsible? Was it the exhausted mother of a patient? The owners, hoping to cash in on a big insurance payment and send their daughter to college? Could it have been a protestor, trying to prove that the treatment isn’t safe? An ensuing murder trial uncovers unimaginable secrets and lies.

Drawing on the author’s own experiences - as a former trial lawyer, Korean American immigrant, and mother of a real-life “submarine” patient - Miracle Creek (2019) pieces together the tense atmosphere of a courtroom drama and the complexities of family life. 

Miracle Creek is a powerful debut from an unforgettable new voice. It won the 2020 Edgar Award for First Novel, the 2020 ITW Thriller Award for Best First Novel, the 2020 Strand Critics Award for Best Debut Novel and the 2020 Pinckley Prize for Debut Novel.

It was voted Best Book of the Year by Time, The Washington Post, Today show, Real Simple, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, Chicago Public Library, Amazon, Hudson Booksellers, BookPage and CrimeReads.

About the author: Angie Kim is the debut author of the international bestseller and Edgar winner Miracle Creek. She moved as a preteen from Seoul, to the suburbs of Baltimore. She attended Stanford University and Harvard Law School, then practiced as a trial lawyer. 

Her novel also won the ITW Thriller Award, the Strand Critics’ Award, and the Pinckley Prize. A Korean immigrant, former editor of the Harvard Law Review, and one of Variety Magazine’s inaugural “10 Storytellers to Watch,” Kim has written for Vogue, The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Glamour, and numerous literary journals. She lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and three sons. 

Her upcoming novel, Happiness Quotient, is about a 10-year-old boy who is nonverbal and on the autism spectrum. And he goes on a walk with his father, who is his caregiver, and only he returns. The father does not return. So it is about trying to figure out what happened because the son cannot communicate.

Rating:  5/5

The Reluctant Registrant

House Of Trelawney (Satire, Domestic Fiction) by Hannah Rothschild

Paperback: Real intimacy was a delicate cloth of shared experiences stitched together by tiny accretions of time, mutual trust and support. It wasn't something that could be folded, put away and shaken out when the need presented itself. Whatever the three women once enjoyed had lain fallow and untended for so many years that it had shrunk and corroded. At best their friendship was like an old postcard, a tinted seaside scene, imbued only with memory and sentimentality. - House of Trelawney

The seat of the Trelawney family for over 800 years, Trelawney Castle was once the jewel of the Cornish coast. Each successive Earl spent with abandon, turning the house and grounds into a sprawling, extravagant palimpsest of wings, turrets and follies. But recent generations have been better at spending than making money.

Now living in isolated penury, unable to communicate with each other or the rest of the world, the family are running out of options. Three unexpected events will hasten their demise: the sudden appearance of a new relation, an illegitimate, headstrong, beautiful girl; an unscrupulous American hedge fund manager determined to exact revenge; and the crash of 2008.

A love story and social satire set in the parallel and seemingly unconnected worlds of the British aristocracy and high finance, House of Trelawney is also the story of lost and found friendships between three women. One of them will die; another will discover her vocation; and the third will find love.

House of Trelawney (2020) is a tale of old money, new money and no money at all. If you are in need of a Succession replacement, then this tale of a crumbling English dynasty clinging on to the past while coping with the fallout of the 2008 crash is for you (Stylist Magazine). 

House of Trelawney is shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction 2020.

About the author: Hannah Rothschild CBE is a British writer, documentary filmmaker, businesswoman and philanthropist. Her biography, The Baroness, was published in 2012 in the UK, US and twelve other territories. Her first novel, The Improbability of Love, published in 2015 won the Bollinger Wodehouse Prize for best comic novel and was runner up for the Bailey Women's Prize for fiction in 2015. 

Hannah’s features and interviews appear in The Telegraph, The Times (London), The New York Times and Vogue. Her documentaries have been shown on the BBC, HBO and at international film festivals. She has lectured on art, film and philanthropy at the Getty, the Royal Academy of Arts and at the Hay Festival. From August 2015 to October 2019, she was the first female Chair of the Board of Trustees of the National Gallery in London.

Hannah is actively involved in a range of organisations including the Rothschild Foundation, Waddesdon Manor, Yad Hanadiv, Illuminated River and an asset management company. In 2018, Hannah was made Commander of the British Empire (CBE) for services to Literature and Philanthropy.

Rating: 5/5

Nothing Can Stop God From Reaching Us: A Dachau Diary By A Survivor by Raphael Tijhuis OCarm

Paperback: In the absence of human satisfaction, one achieves the complete surrender to God's providence, and thus to God. Lack of everything that is needed to live creates more room for the Mysterious. I must confess that every now and then I look back to those difficult years with some feeling of nostalgia. Never have I felt closer to God. The electrified barbed wire could not prevent God from reaching us. - Raphael Tijhuis OCarm

On 25 July 1940, while helping to prepare for the celebration of Mass, Brother Raphael was arrested by the Gestapo police of the Nazi regime. The charges were based on seemingly inconsequential comments Rafael had written in letters back to family and friends in the Netherlands. His arrest began a five-year journey through a series of jails and prison camps and ended in the dreaded Dachau concentration camp. 

However, for Raphael, the years of his imprisonment were a purification of his faith. Despite being forced to exist in dreadful places of hatred, violence and death, Raphael experienced powerful moments of God's mercy and attained a sense of God's presence he never experienced before or after.

Today the sacristy in Mainz where Raphael received word that the Gestapo were waiting to arrest him is the chapel of the Carmelite community.

Nothing Can Stop God From Reaching Us was first published in 2007 with its second printing in 2009.

About the author: Raphael Tijhuis OCarm was born on 10 October 1913 in Rijssen, the Netherlands, the youngest of three sons. After becoming an apprentice painter, he joined the Carmelite Order, making his simple profession on 30 August 1933 in Merkelbeek. Shortly thereafter, he was sent to Mainz, Germany, to serve what was supposed to be the humble life of a brother in the Carmelite community there. Brother Rafael Tijhuis died on 5 June 1981 in Mainz, Germany.

Death On Ocean Boulevard: Inside The Coronado Mansion Case (True Crime) by Caitlin Rother

Paperback: Award-winning investigative journalist and bestselling author Caitlin Rother explores the mysterious death of 32-year-old Rebecca Zahau, who was found hanging from a second-story balcony of her multimillionaire boyfriend's San Diego mansion in 2011. She was naked and gagged, with her ankles tied and hands bound behind her. On the door to her bedroom, investigators found a hand-written message: "SHE SAVED HIM CAN YOU SAVE HER." The death was deemed a suicide, but Rother reveals there's more to the story.

"I got a girl, hung herself in the guest house."

The call came on the morning of 13 July 2011, from the historic Spreckels Mansion, a lavish beachfront property in Coronado, California, owned by pharmaceutical tycoon and multimillionaire Jonah Shacknai. 

When authorities arrived, they found the naked body of Jonah's girlfriend, Rebecca Zahau, gagged, her ankles tied and her wrists bound behind her. Jonah's brother, Adam, claimed to have found Rebecca hanging by a rope from the second-floor balcony. On a bedroom door in black paint were the cryptic words: SHE SAVED HIM CAN YOU SAVE HER.

Was this scrawled message a suicide note or a killer's taunt? Rebecca's death came two days after Jonah's six-year-old son, Max, took a devastating fall while in Rebecca's care. Authorities deemed Rebecca's death a suicide resulting from her guilt. But who would stage either a suicide or a murder in such a bizarre, elaborate way?

Award-winning investigative journalist Caitlin Rother weaves stunning new details into a personal yet objective examination of the sensational case. She explores its many layers - including the civil suit in which a jury found Adam Shacknai responsible for Rebecca's death, and the San Diego County Sheriff's Department bombshell decision to reconfirm its original findings. 

As compelling as it is troubling, Death On Ocean Boulevard (2021), a controversial real-life mystery, is a classic American tragedy that evokes the same haunting fascination as the JonBenét Ramsey and OJ Simpson cases.

About the author: Caitlin Rother is a New York Times bestselling true crime author and Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist. She worked for nearly two decades as an investigative reporter and has had work published in Cosmopolitan, The Los Angeles Times, The San Diego Union-Tribune, The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe, among others. As a TV crime commentator, she has done more than 200 media appearances on episodes of 20/20, People Magazine Investigates, Crime Watch Daily, Australia's World News, Nancy Grace, Snapped, and numerous shows on Netflix, Investigation Discovery, HLN, REELZ, Oxygen, E!, A&E, C‑SPAN and various PBS affiliates. Rother also works as a writing/research coach and consultant, and plays piano and sings in an acoustic band. She lives in Southern California and can be found online at CaitlinRother.com.

Definition: Thunderplump

The Voyage Never Ends

Evidence Of Satan In The Modern World by Léon Cristiani

Paperback: The Devil's deepest wile is to persuade us that he does not exist.

Using Baudelaire's well-known phrase as a starting point, Msgr Léon Cristiani has amassed convincing proof that the Devil does indeed exist and that he continues to manifest his presence in the modern world, no less than in earlier times. 

Because he documents with scrupulous care the still present phenomena of diabolical infestation, possession and temptation, his book has become one of the best ever written on the subject.

No one studying possession and exorcism today can neglect this fascinating and absorbing book.

Evidence of Satan in the Modern World (1961) was published in England under the title Satan in the Modern World. 

It is translated from its French edition, Présence de Satan dans le monde moderne (1959), by Cynthia Rowland.

About the author: The Reverend Monsignor Léon Cristiani was a French priest and author of the twentieth century. His Evidence of Satan in the Modern World unhesitatingly declares the Devil's existence and activeness, in addition to serving as a solid reference for those studying exorcism and possession. Father Cristiani's work was originally published in 1959 by Editions France-Empire, Paris, and received the Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur two years later. It was also printed by TAN in 1974.

A True Person

Before You Are Ready

 

Crisp Humour

Father Ignatius Spencer by Gerard Skinner

Paperback: On 20 February 2021, Pope Francis declared Fr Ignatius Spencer to be Venerable, putting him a crucial step closer to final recognition as a Saint.

The Spencers reached the peak of their wealth in the eighteenth century; in the nineteenth century they achieved the commanding heights of political power; by the end of the twentieth century they knew the extremes of celebrity.

Ignatius Spencer (1799-1864), great, great, great uncle of Princess Diana, renounced his wealth and position in society in order to serve the poor, begging his way around the British Isles and beyond, wearing the rough black habit of the Passionists, the austere religious order he had joined. He was welcomed by popes, cardinals, and aristocrats and loved by the poor and destitute, particularly in Ireland where, even during the famine of 1845-52, and against the rising tide of Irish nationalism, this son of a former First Lord of the Admiralty, brother of both a former Chancellor or the Exchequer and of the governess to Queen Victoria’s children, aroused the warmth and admiration of tens of thousands of the Irish as he travelled the length and breadth of Ireland preaching in hundreds of churches and chapels.

Father Ignatius Spencer (2018) is the story of a remarkable nineteenth-century figure who for some was ‘a dirty, mad mendicant’ and for others no less than a saint. 

Today, Ignatius Spencer, already recognized for his life of heroic virtue, is under consideration for canonization.

About the author: Gerard Skinner studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London and the Venerable English College in Rome. A priest of the Archdiocese of Westminster, he has written, edited or contributed to a number of books including Newman the Priest, The Pallium - A Brief Guide to its History and Significance, and, with co-author Fr Nicholas Schofield, The English Cardinals and The English Vicars Apostolic.