Dressed In A Suit And Tie

Wolfish: The Stories We Tell About Fear, Ferocity And Freedom by Erica Berry

Upcoming hardback: Wolfish: The Stories We Tell About Fear, Ferocity And Freedom (2 March 2023) is a Financial Times Non-Fiction Book To Read in 2023 and the most anticipated book of 2023 for TIME, Los Angeles Times, Vulture, Salon, Lit Hub, Goodreads, Rumpus, Bustle, Reader's Digest, Book Riot, Debutiful and more.

Wolves abound through cultural folklore and through literature - vilified and venerated in equal measure. In Wolfish, Erica Berry examines these depictions, alongside her own research of the wolf for nearly a decade, to get to the heart of what our stories about the wolf reveal about our relationships with one another and ourselves: 'What does it mean to want to embody the same creature from which you are supposed to be running?'

The wolf is so often depicted as the male predator, preying on the vulnerable girl/woman who strays from the path; the she-wolf, meanwhile, depicts women who sit outside the accepted boundaries of feminine behaviour. Berry openly recounts her own uncomfortable and sometimes frightening experiences as a woman to try to understand how we navigate our fears when threat can seem constant.

Through it all, Berry finds new expressions for courage and survival: how to be a brave human and animal member of our fragile, often dangerous world.

About the author: Erica Berry is a writer based in her hometown of Portland, Oregon. She has an MFA from the University of Minnesota, where she was a College of Liberal Arts Fellow. Her writing has appeared in the Guardian, New York Times Magazine, Yale Review, Outside Magazine, Catapult, Atlantic, Guernica and elsewhere. Winner of the Steinberg Essay Prize and the Kurt Brown Prize in Nonfiction, she has received fellowships and funding from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Tin House, the Ucross Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board and the Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources. A former Writer-in-Residence with the National Writers Series in Traverse City, Michigan, she is currently a Writer-in-the-Schools with Literary Arts in Portland. Wolfish is her first book.

High Stakes by Danielle Steel

Paperback: High Stakes (2022) is a compelling and thought-provoking novel from the world’s favourite storyteller. Set around a New York talent agency, a group of accomplished women discover the high price of success.

Jane Addison is smart, young and ambitious. She is delighted to have landed a job with a prestigious talent agency, Fletcher and Benson. Hailey West, her boss, is dedicated to her authors, but her home life is chaotic and challenging as a single mother following her husband’s tragic death. Francine Rivers, the stern and bitter head of department, is also raising children on her own after an acrimonious divorce, and she has had to overcome financial hardship by paying the very highest price.

Meanwhile, Allie Moore seems to have it all: she relishes success and loves working with the talented actors she represents. But then a passionate relationship with one of her star clients risks derailing her career. And Merriwether Jones, the CFO of the agency, appears to have the perfect marriage until her husband’s jealousy over her career threatens her happiness.

Jane quickly realizes that there are damaging secrets behind the doors of the agency. She has the least power, but she is also the least willing to accept things as they are. And when she tries to put things right, the consequences will leave no one unscathed.

In this riveting novel, five women at the top of their game navigate the challenges of career and ambition, family and personal lives in a world where it’s necessary to fight for what is right.

About the author: Danielle Steel has been hailed as one of the world's most popular authors, with nearly a billion copies of her novels sold. Her recent international bestsellers include The High Notes, The Whittiers, and Without A Trace. She is also the author of His Bright Light, the story of her son Nick Traina's life and death; A Gift of Hope, a memoir of her work with the homeless; and the children's books Pretty Minnie in Paris and Pretty Minnie in Hollywood. Danielle divides her time between Paris and her home in northern California.

Rating: 5/5

Seen At Cauchi's Stationery Shop In Mosta, Malta

Strangers On A Pier: Portrait Of A Family by Tash Aw

Hardback: From the award-winning author of Five Star Billionaire and We, The Survivors comes a whirlwind personal history of modern Asia, as told through his Malaysian and Chinese heritage.

In Strangers on a Pier: Portrait of a Family (2021), acclaimed author Tash Aw explores the panoramic cultural vitality of modern Asia through his own complicated family story of migration and adaptation, which is reflected in his own face. From a taxi ride in present-day Bangkok, to eating Kentucky Fried Chicken in 1980s Kuala Lumpur, to his grandfathers' treacherous boat journeys to Malaysia from mainland China in the 1920s, Aw weaves together stories of insiders and outsiders, images from rural villages to megacity night clubs, and voices in a dizzying variety of languages, dialects, and slangs, to create an intricate and astoundingly vivid portrait of a place caught between the fast-approaching future and a past that won't let go.

Strangers on a Pier: Portrait of a Family (2021) was originally published as The Face: Strangers on a Pier in the United States in 2016.

About the author: Tash Aw was born in Taiwan to Malaysian parents and grew up in Kuala Lumpar.

He moved to England in his teens, and studied Law at the Universities of Cambridge and Warwick. He moved to London and undertook various jobs, including working as a lawyer for four years. He then studied Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia.

His first novel, The Harmony Silk Factory (2005), won the 2005 Whitbread First Novel Award, and the Commonwealth Writers Prize (South East Asia and South Pacific Region Best First Book). It juxtaposes three accounts of the life of Johnny Lim, a Chinese peasant in rural Malay. His subsequent novels are Map of the Invisible World (2009), set in Indonesia and Malaysia in the mid-1960s, and Five Star Billionaire (2013). In 2019, he published We, the Survivors, with Fourth Estate.

His work of short fiction, Sail, won the O Henry Prize in 2013 and he has had pieces published in A Public Space and the landmark Granta 100, amongst others.

Ash Wednesday

Vanity Of Vanities, All Is Vanity

Meditations on Death: Preparing For Eternity by Thomas à Kempis

Hardback: “Remember That Thou Art Dust and Unto Dust Thou Shalt Return.”

Thinking on death is the most profitable meditation we can make.

Indeed, Our Lord’s most holy passion and death offers us the greatest meditation, but pondering our own imminent death can bring us great fruit as it prepares us for the most important thing we will do: enter into eternity.

By meditating on their deaths, many have renounced this fleeting world for the monastery and cloister. 

By meditating on their deaths, many have conquered the flesh, the world, and the devil. 

By meditating on their deaths, many have climbed the ladder of holiness in a brief time.

To keep death daily before your eyes is one of the greatest secrets to sanctity, for death is the only certainty in this life. And those who ponder the hour of their death daily will not be surprised when that moment comes; rather, they will have prepared for it their entire lives and will be ready to meet their Creator.

In this soul-jarring work, Thomas à Kempis guides the reader to consider the last four things: death, judgment, heaven, and hell. Meditations on Death (2022, English Translation) is like a mini-retreat that will redirect your heart to eternal things rather than passing things for to contemplate the hour of your death is to already have one foot in heaven. Meditations on Death us translated from the Dutch by Father Robert Nixon, OSB.

About the author: Thomas à Kempis (c1380-1471; German: Thomas von Kempen; Dutch: Thomas van Kempen) was a German-Dutch canon regular of the late medieval period and the author of The Imitation of Christ, written anonymously in Latin in the Netherlands c 1418–1427, one of the most popular and best known Christian devotional books. The Imitation of Christ is said to have made more saints than any other book - next to the Bible, of course. Countless saints from Thérèse of Lisieux to Ignatius of Loyola have kept this book on their nightstands, used it to direct their minds during adoration, and carried it in their pockets as a soldier carries his weapon into battle.

His name means "Thomas of Kempen", Kempen being his home town. He was a member of the Modern Devotion, a spiritual movement during the late medieval period, and a follower of Geert Groote (1340-1384) and Florens Radewyns (1350-1400), the founders of the Brethren of the Common Life. 

The other popular book, next to The Imitation of Christ and Meditations on Death, is Humility and Elevation of the Mind to God. The books are available on Amazon UK and USA and tanbooks.com

Happiness No 20223

Great Lent: Journey To Pascha by Alexander Schmemann

Paperback: This revised edition of a Lenten classic (1969) examines the meaning of the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts, the Prayer of St Ephraim the Syrian, the Canon of St Andrew of Crete, and other neglected or misunderstood treasures of Lenten worship. 

Schmemann draws on the Church's sacramental and liturgical tradition to suggest the meaning of Lent in our lives. 

The Lenten season is meant to kindle a 'bright sadness' within our hearts. Its aim is precisely the remembrance of Christ, a longing for a relationship with God that has been lost. Lent offers the time and place for recovery of this relationship. The darkness of Lent allows the flame of the Holy Spirit to burn within our hearts until we are led to the brilliance of the Resurrection.

Let us receive with joy, O faithful, the divinely inspire announcement of Lent.

Like Ninevites of old, like harlots and publicans who heard John preaching repentance through abstinence, let us prepare for ht Master's communion performed in Zion.

Let us wash ourselves with tears for its divine purification.

Let us pray to behold the fulfillment of Pascha, the true Revelation.

Let us prepare for adoring the Cross and Resurrection of Christ our God!

Do not deprive us of our expectations, O Lover of Man!

(Cheese-Fare Week, Tuesday Vespers, Apostikha)

You can buy Great Lent (1969) on Amazon UK and US.

About the author: The Reverend Dr Alexander Schmemann (1921-1983) was professor of Liturgical Theology and Dean of St Vladimir's Seminary in Crestwood, New York.

Stolen by Ann-Helén Laestadius

Hardback: Louise Erdrich meets Jo Nesbø in this spellbinding Swedish novel that follows a young indigenous woman as she struggles to defend her family’s reindeer herd and culture amidst xenophobia, climate change, and a devious hunter whose targeted kills are considered mere theft in the eyes of the law.

On a winter day north of the Arctic Circle, nine-year-old Elsa - daughter of Sámi reindeer herders - sees a man brutally kill her beloved reindeer calf and threaten her into silence. When her father takes her to report the crime, local police tell them that there is nothing they can do about these “stolen” animals. 

Killings like these are classified as theft in the reports that continue to pile up, uninvestigated. But reindeers are not just the Sámi’s livelihood, they also hold spiritual significance; attacking a reindeer is an attack on the culture itself.

Ten years later, hatred and threats against the Sámi keep escalating, and more reindeer are tortured and killed in Elsa’s community. Finally, she has had enough and decides to push back on the apathetic police force. The hunter comes after her this time, leading to a catastrophic final confrontation.

Based on real events, Ann-Helén Laestadius’s award-winning novel Stolen (2023) is part coming-of-age story, part love song to a disappearing natural world, and part electrifying countdown to a dramatic resolution - a searing depiction of a forgotten part of Sweden.

Stolen is soon to be a Netflix film.

About the author: Ann-Helén Laestadius is an author and journalist from Kiruna, Sweden. She is Sámi and of Tornedalian descent, two of Sweden’s national minorities. In 2016, Laestadius was awarded the prestigious August Prize for Best Young Adult and Children’s Novel for Ten Past One, for which she was also awarded Norrland’s Literature Prize. Stolen is her first adult novel and was named Sweden’s Book of the Year.

Rating: 5/5

The Garnett Girls by Georgina Moore

Hardback: The Garnett Girls (2023) is a brilliant debut full of heart and warmth about three very different sisters and their free-spirited mother who must grapple with life, responsibilities, and family secrets.

Forbidden, passionate and all-encompassing, Margo and Richard's love affair was the stuff of legend but, ultimately, doomed. When Richard walked out, Margo locked herself away, leaving her three daughters, Rachel, Imogen, and Sasha, to run wild.

Years later, charismatic Margo entertains lovers and friends in her cottage on the Isle of Wight, refusing to ever speak of Richard and her painful past. But her silence is keeping each of the Garnett girls from finding true happiness.

Rachel is desperate to return to London but is held hostage by responsibility for Sandcove, their beloved but crumbling family home. Dreamy Imogen feels the pressure to marry her kind, considerate fiancé, even when life is taking an unexpected turn. Wild, passionate Sasha, trapped between her fractured family and controlling husband, is weighed down by a secret that could shake the family to its core.

The Garnett Girls (2023), the captivating debut novel from Georgina Moore, asks whether children can ever be free of the mistakes of their parents.

About the author: Now Deputy MD of PR Agency Midas, Georgina Moore is an award-winning book publicist who has worked in the publishing industry for twenty years. She has worked with a huge variety of authors across all genres and at all stages of their careers - from debuts to household names. Her most recent PR campaign for Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet has won the FutureBook and PPC awards for campaign of the year and is Nibbies nominated.

The Garnett Girls is Georgina’s first novel and is set on the Isle of Wight where Georgina and her family have a holiday houseboat called Sturdy. Georgina’s main residence is a houseboat on Taggs Island in the River Thames, where she lives with her partner, two children and Bomber, the Border terrier.

Rating: 5/5

The Present Crisis Of The Holy See: A Warning About Antichrist by Henry Edward Cardinal Manning

Paperback: This book, The Present Crisis of the Holy See: A Warning About Antichrist, was compiled from four lectures given by Henry Cardinal Manning in 1861 on the present crisis of the Catholic Church. 

He correctly saw that a grave crisis was approaching and described the theological basis of the Great Apostasy and the more common speculations of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church on this most important subject. 

Further in several places, he cites the Universal Agreement of the Fathers of the Church, which we know to be an infallible guide in discerning the truth in doctrinal matters. 

This book is even more appropriate today, when many of these prophecies appear to be being fulfilled. 

This book is even more important today, when many fear the advent of Antichrist. 

Saint Pius X said: "Who can fail to see that society is at the present time, more than in any past age, suffering from a terrible and deep-rooted malady which, developing everyday and eating into its inmost being, is dragging it to destruction? You understand, Venerable Brethren, what this disease is - apostasy from God... When all this is considered, there is good reason to fear lest this great perversity may be as it were a foretaste, and perhaps the beginning of those evils are reserved for the last days; and that there may be already in the world the "Son of Perdition" of whom the Apostle speaks." (E Supremi, Encyclical On The Restoration Of All Things in Christ, n 3, 5; 4 October 1903).

About the author: Henry Edward Manning (1808-1892) was an English prelate of the Catholic church, and the second Archbishop of Westminster from 1865 until his death in 1892. He was ordained in the Church of England as a young man, but converted to Catholicism in the aftermath of the Gorham judgement. (Wikipedia)

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