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.