Nuns: A History Of Convent Life by Silvia Evangelisti

Paperback: Cloistered and inaccessible 'brides of Chirst'?

Or socially engaged women, active in the outside world to a degree impossible for their secular sisters?

Nuns: A History of Convent Life (2007) is about the world of nuns and convent life in the words of the women themselves.

About the author: Silvia Evangelisti is Lecturer in Early Modern History in the School of History at the University of East Anglia, UK. She has published widely on women and gender in both English and Italian. She has co-edited (with Sandra Cavallo) Domestic and Institutional Interiors in Early Modern Europe (Ashgate 2009), A Cultural History of Childhood and the Family in the Renaissance (Berg 2010); (with Fancisco Chacon) Identidad y comunidad en el mundo Iberico (Universitat de Valencia 2013). 

Her main research interests so far have been focusing on female monastic institutions in early modern Italy and Europe, women's writings (particularly religious writings), and how religious women responded to normative practices implemented by the Catholic church and state, in the decades following the Council of Trent. She has also done research on women's writings in Italy and, more recently, Spain.

Dead And Buried (True Crime) by Corey Mitchell

Paperback: On the night of 12 November 1998, in San Luis Obispo, California, attractive blonde college student Rachel Newhouse was walking home alone when suddenly a stranger appeared in front of her. His visage was a skull-face: a grotesque Halloween mask. Beating her unconscious with her fists, the attacker threw her into his pick-up truck, took her to his secluded canyon cabin and raped her, still wearing the mask. Rachel Newhouse was hog-tied and left to strangle to death.

On 11 March 1999, in the same town, a stalker who had been shadowing Aundria Crawford, 20, broke into her apartment, pummelled her into insensibility, and carried her away in his truck to his canyon lair. There, she was raped, tortured, and murdered.

As Californians reacted with panic and outrage to the two disappearances, parole officer avid Zaragoza paid a routine visit to one of his charges, Rex Allan Krebs, 33, a violent serial rapist who had served only ten years of a twenty-year sentence in Soledad State Prison. After sending Krebs back to jail for violating his parole, Zaragoza discovered Aundria Crawford's eight ball keychain on the premises. An intensive search of the canyon discovered the two victims' bodies buried in shallow graves on the paroled rapist's property. Confessing, alcoholic sex-and-slaughter addict Krebs conceded, "If I am not a monster, then what am I?" A jury answered his question in May 2001, sentencing him to death by lethal injection.

Dead and Buried (2003) gives a shocking account of rape, torture, and murder on the California coast and includes the killer's confession. Dead and Buried can be purchased used on Amazon (UK and US).

About the author: Corey Mitchell wrote several bestselling true crime books including Hollywood Death Scenes, Dead and Buried, Evil Eyes, Savage Son, Strangler, Murdered Innocence, and Pure Murder. He was also the founder of the #1 true crime blog, In Cold Blog, and a contributing editor for MetalSucks, the #1 website for heavy metal news. He co-founded Austin’s Housecore Horror Film Festival and co-authored Philip H Anselmo’s Mouth for War: Pantera and Beyond.

Bibliomaniac: An Obsessive's Tour Of The Bookshops Of Britain by Robin Ince

Hardback: Why play to 12,000 people when you can play to 12? 

In Autumn 2021, Robin Ince’s stadium tour with Professor Brian Cox was postponed due to the pandemic. 

Rather than do nothing, he decided instead to go on a tour of over a hundred bookshops in the UK, from Wigtown to Penzance; from Swansea to Margate.

Packed with witty anecdotes and tall tales, Bibliomaniac: An Obsessive's Tour Of The Bookshops Of Britain (2022) takes the reader on a journey across Britain as Robin explores his lifelong love of bookshops and books – and also tries to find out just why he can never have enough of them. It is the story of an addiction and a romance, and also of an occasional points failure just outside Oxenholme.

Bibliomaniac: An Obsessive's Tour Of The Bookshops Of Britain is now available in all bookshops and online selling platforms.

About the author: Robin Ince is co-presenter of the award-winning BBC Radio 4 show, The Infinite Monkey Cage. He has won the Time Out Outstanding Achievement in Comedy, was nominated for a British Comedy Award for Best Live show, and has won three Chortle Awards. He has toured his stand up across the world from Oslo to LA to Sydney, both solo and with his radio double act partner, Professor Brian Cox. 

He is the radio critic for the Big Issue and writes a monthly column about science for Focus Magazine. He appears regularly on both television and radio. He has two top-ten iTunes podcast series to his name.

Sparring Partners by John Grisham

Hardback: #1 New York Times bestselling author John Grisham is the acknowledged master of the legal thriller. In his first collection of novellas, law is a common thread, but America’s favourite storyteller has several surprises in store in his latest book, Sparring Partners (2022).

“Homecoming” takes us back to Ford County, the fictional setting of many of John Grisham’s unforgettable stories. Jake Brigance is back, but he is not in the courtroom. He is called upon to help an old friend, Mack Stafford, a former lawyer in Clanton, who three years earlier became a local legend when he stole money from his clients, divorced his wife, filed for bankruptcy, and left his family in the middle of the night, never to be heard from again - until now. Now Mack is back, and he’s leaning on his old pals, Jake and Harry Rex, to help him return. His homecoming does not go as planned.

In “Strawberry Moon,” we meet Cody Wallace, a young death row inmate only three hours away from execution. His lawyers can’t save him, the courts slam the door, and the governor says no to a last-minute request for clemency. As the clock winds down, Cody has one final request. 

The “Sparring Partners” are the Malloy brothers, Kirk and Rusty, two successful young lawyers who inherited a once prosperous firm when its founder, their father, was sent to prison. Kirk and Rusty loathe each other, and speak to each other only when necessary. As the firm disintegrates, the resulting fiasco falls into the lap of Diantha Bradshaw, the only person the partners trust. Can she save the Malloys, or does she take a stand for the first time in her career and try to save herself?

By turns suspenseful, hilarious, powerful, and moving, these are three of the greatest stories John Grisham has ever told.

About the author: John Grisham is the author of forty-seven consecutive #1 bestsellers, which have been translated into nearly fifty languages. His recent books include The Judge’s List, Sooley, and his third Jake Brigance novel, A Time for Mercy, which is being developed by HBO as a limited series.

Grisham is a two-time winner of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction and was honoured with the Library of Congress Creative Achievement Award for Fiction.

When he is not writing, Grisham serves on the board of directors of the Innocence Project and of Centurion Ministries, two national organizations dedicated to exonerating those who have been wrongfully convicted. Much of his fiction explores deep-seated problems in our criminal justice system.

John lives on a farm in central Virginia.

Rating: 5/5 

Unread Books on Your Shelves

St Paisios The Athonite (1924-1994)

Seen At Rue Saint-Julien le Pauvre In Paris, France

The Royal Reading Room

 

St Anthony of the Desert (251-356)

 

Illegal

I Expect I Shall

Windswept House: A Vatican Novel by Malachi Martin

Paperback: The Cold War has ended. With a scope and daring not possible until now, an unlikely international alliance of top-level political, financial, and religious interests sees the way clear at last to its ultimate goal: the establishment of a single global society. 

Utopia.

These are men with nothing in common but immense power and a towering ambition for still more. With world unity and prosperity as their slogan - and with betrayal, scandal, and murder as their ready weapons - they have the means and the will to capture as their own the perfect global machinery for their plans: the oldest, wiliest, and most stable political chancery in the world - the Vatican.

At the vortex of this lethal struggle stands the embattled Pope, a geopolitical genius whose elimination is the short-term solution to a long-term goal, and two American brothers, Paul and Christian Gladstone, one a lawyer and the other a priest, who appear to be the perfect pawns. 

One falls prey to the sharp teeth of greed for power. The other will become one of the Slavic Pontiff's closest allies and will discover the darkest secrets at the very heart of papal Rome.

From America to Europe to Russia, in broad landscapes and clandestine corridors, a rich and varied cast - presidents and politicos, simple saints and savvy sinners, popes and pope-makers - clash with one another amid dramatic and sometimes bloody events that will affect the destiny of every person alive today.

Windswept House: A Vatican Novel (1996) charts the turmoil within the Catholic faith and within Vatican City. The book is currently available on Amazon (UK and the USA) and Book Depository. 

About the author: Malachi Brendan Martin (1921-1999), also known under the pseudonym of Michael Serafian, was an Irish-born American Traditionalist Catholic priest, biblical archaeologist, exorcist, palaeographer, professor, and prolific writer on the Roman Catholic Church. He is the author of the national best-sellers Vatican, The Final Conclave, and Hostage to the Devil.

And Then We Return Home

Alas, He Ends Up Believing Anything