Lost In The Valley Of Death by Harley Rustad

About the book: In the vein of Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild, Lost in The Valley of Death: A Story of Obsession and Danger in The Himalayas (2022) is a riveting work of narrative nonfiction centering on the unsolved disappearance of an American backpacker in India - one of at least two dozen tourists who have met a similar fate in the remote and storied Parvati Valley.

For centuries, India has enthralled westerners looking for an exotic getaway, a brief immersion in yoga and meditation, or in rare cases, a true pilgrimage to find spiritual revelation. Justin Alexander Shetler, an inveterate traveler trained in wilderness survival, was one such seeker.

In his early thirties Justin Alexander Shetler, quit his job at a tech startup and set out on a global journey: across the United States by motorcycle, then down to South America, and on to the Philippines, Thailand, and Nepal, in search of authentic experiences and meaningful encounters, while also documenting his travels on Instagram. His enigmatic character and magnetic personality gained him a devoted following who lived vicariously through his adventures. But the ever restless explorer was driven to pursue ever greater challenges, and greater risks, in what had become a personal quest - his own hero’s journey.

In 2016, he made his way to the Parvati Valley, a remote and rugged corner of the Indian Himalayas steeped in mystical tradition yet shrouded in darkness and danger. There, he spent weeks studying under the guidance of a sadhu, an Indian holy man, living and meditating in a cave. At the end of August, accompanied by the sadhu, he set off on a “spiritual journey” to a holy lake - a journey from which he would never return.

Lost in the Valley of Death is about one man’s search to find himself, in a country where for many westerners the path to spiritual enlightenment can prove fraught, even treacherous. But it is also a story about all of us and the ways, sometimes extreme, we seek fulfilment in life.

Lost in the Valley of Death is the Winner of the 2023 Poland Mountain Literature Festival Award for Best Non-Fiction Book and Overall Grand Prix; Winner of the 2023 Religion News Association Award for Nonfiction Books; Finalist for a 2023 Crime Writers of Canada Award for Nonfiction Crime Book; Finalist for the 2022 Banff Mountain Book Award for Adventure Travel; and CBC best Canadian Nonfiction of 2022.

Lost in the Valley of Death includes 16 pages of colour photographs.

About the author: Harley Rustad is is an award-winning and bestselling author, journalist, and magazine editor. His first book was Big Lonely Doug: The Story of One of Canada's Last Great Trees. It was named a best book of 2018 by the Globe and Mail and was nominated for several awards including the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing. 

His writing has appeared in numerous publications, including Outside, the Guardian, the Globe and Mail, and Geographical. He is a features editor and writer at The Walrus magazine (where he has worked for more than ten years), a faculty editor at the Banff Centre Mountain and Wilderness Writing residency, Canada, and the founder of the Port Renfrew Writers' Retreat in Canada. In 2024, he was awarded a gold National Magazine Award for Editor Grand Prix. A fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, Rustad is originally from Salt Spring Island, British Columbia.

Big Apple Farm by Megan Clawson

About the book: What is Big Apple Farm (2026) by Megan Clawson about? It is the perfect book for fans of small town romance.

Beatrice Norton is a country girl. Working on a farm by day and pulling pints at the Big Apple pub by night, her simple life suits her just fine.

Arthur Redgrave is city boy. Raised in luxury by acting royalty, he dreams of conquering the Big Apple - New York - and is not afraid to trade off his parents’ name to get there.

But fed up with his entitled attitude, his parents ship him off to his dad's childhood farm for a reality check. Tasked with showing Arthur the ropes, Beatrice finds herself stuck with man who cannot tell a pitchfork from a salad fork.

Despite their efforts to remain at odds, Arthur finds himself respecting the straight-talking farm girl and Beatrice wonders whether there is more beneath his polished (and handsome) exterior. Can love bridge the gap between rural roots and big-city dreams, or will their hearts remain worlds apart?

About the author: Megan Clawson was born and raised in Boston, Lincolnshire in the United Kingdom. A beefeater’s daughter, her heart was ensnared by the city of London at a young age, and she moved to study English with Film at King’s College in 2018. Whilst there, she fell in love with her own royal guard. Now, she still resides in the Tower of London, alongside her little dog Ethel - and works as an English Tutor and a TV and film extra, alongside her writing. Big Apple Farm is her fourth novel.

Rating: 5/5

Hell Hath No Fury by Bryna Taubman

About the book: Dan Broderick was one of California's most successful attorneys; his wife, Betty, a beautiful socialite. But when Betty discovered Dan's hidden life, the façade of LaJolla's golden couple was shattered. 

What followed was a vicious five-year battle that finally ended in a shocking double murder.

A Harvard Law School graduate, Dan manipulated the law to strip Betty of everything she loved: her home, her friends - even her children. When she frantically tried to fight back, he had her committed to a mental hospital. His new wife, Linda, even sent the once-beautiful Betty wrinkle cream ads and weight loss pamphlets.

Consumed by hatred and thoughts of revenge, Betty's rage exploded on the night of 5 November 1989. Before the sun rose the next day, Dan Broderick and his gorgeous new wife were dead - their bullet-riddled bodies wrapped in the blood-soaked sheets of their bed.

Hell Hath No Fury: A True Story of Wealth and Passion, Love and Envy, and a Woman Driven to the Ultimate Revenge (1992) is a true-crime book that details the infamous 1989 case of Betty and Dan Broderick.

About the author: Bryna Taubman is an American journalist and writer. She graduated from Miami University Ohio and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She worked at the New York Post. Taubman is the author of four books: How to Become an Assertive Woman - the key to self-fulfillment; The Preppy Murder Trial; Lady Cop: True Stories of Police Women in America's Toughest City; and Hell Hath No Fury: A True Story of Wealth and Passion, Love and Envy, and a Woman Driven to the Ultimate Revenge.

Up On Cove Mountain by Earl Swift

About the book: From the New York Times bestselling author of Chesapeake Requiem comes an intricately plotted tale of two end-to-end adventures through the Appalachian Trail’s twenty-two hundred miles, braided around a third strand, that of the trail’s most notorious tragedy that has haunted Earl Swift for thirty years.

In 1990, a youthful Earl Swift backpacked the Appalachian Trail from Maine to Georgia, a transformative experience that coloured every aspect of his later life. He emerged from his hike across the rugged, sky-high roof of fourteen eastern states a sharper and more organized thinker, a better problem solver, and a committed outdoorsman.

But he also left the AT with baggage: Early in his odyssey, he spent time with a couple of other southbounders, who were friendly, capable, and doing everything right, but who were nonetheless murdered weeks later at a mountaintop campsite in Pennsylvania - a fit of violence that the killer never explained.  

Half a lifetime later, Swift returned to the trail to find out whether he was still, in his sixties, equal to the AT’s roller-coaster terrain. Driving him, too, was a quest for answers that had nagged at him since that first hike: What had happened at that campsite to turn two smart, bighearted people into prey? Why had fate chosen them, when other hikers - Swift included - seemed more likely candidates? And how could such a grisly episode have unfolded in the backcountry’s sylvan loveliness, not to mention one of the safest places around?

Up on Cove Mountain: Adventure, Tragedy, and a Quest for Meaning on the Appalachian Trail is the arresting account of Swift’s 2024 trek through the AT’s enduring wonders and the ghosts of its past, a chronicle of swashbuckling adventure coupled with a meditation on the nature of risk and the risks of nature.

Up on Cove Mountain: Adventure, Tragedy, and a Quest for Meaning on the Appalachian Trail will be on sale on 18 August 2026.

About the author: Earl Swift is the author of the New York Times bestseller Chesapeake Requiem, which was named to ten best-of-the-year lists. His most recent book, Hell Put to Shame, was a finalist for the Edgar Award (Best Fact Crime) and the Virginia Literary Award. A former reporter for The Virginian-Pilot and a contributor to Outside and other publications, he lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains west of Charlottesville.

Treasured Island by Michael Gross

About the book: Treasured Island: The Story of St Barth . . . and Its Barbarians, Billionaires, and Beauties (2026) is a hugely entertaining social history of the elite and exclusive Caribbean island of St Barthélemy from the New York Times bestselling author of Model and 740 Park.

St Barthélemy is revered for its luxury, its stunning beaches and its VIP fans. Those who have either been there or hope to go, know St Bart’s - or St Barth, depending on your level of Francophilia - as the place for the beautiful people, the ultimate see-and-be-seen scene.

Over three decades, acclaimed social chronicler Michael Gross has taken dozens of extended trips to this gorgeous, sultry paradise and knows it almost as a local. In his captivating and detailed history, this “premier chronicler of the rich” (Gay Talese) reveals how the island grew from a barren volcanic island with sometimes in-bred, impoverished residents and no creature comforts to an elite port of call where entertainment, tech, and fashion celebrities, old money, nouveau riche, and international oligarchs vie for tables in chic, expensive restaurants; where pristine beaches, superyachts, and spectacular hotels and lavish private villas are playgrounds for the American, European, and Asian upper class. And some locals have gotten rich off them all.

This is an enticing and entertaining work that combines impeccable reporting and delicious commentary. It is essential reading for everybody who is anybody - or wants to be.

About the author: Michael Gross is the New York Times bestselling author of Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women; 740 Park: The Story of the World’s Richest Apartment Building; and House of Outrageous Fortune: Fifteen Central Park West, the World’s Most Powerful Address. He is the editor-at-large of Palmer: The Palm Beach Reader, and has written for publications around the world, including the New York Times, New York, GQ, Esquire, Vanity Fair, Air Mail and The Daily Beast. He lives in New York City.

The River's Grave (The French Mystery Series) by Christophe Villain

About the book: Lieutenant de Police Armand de Varenne, the son of an influential Parisian family, stumbles upon a series of missing persons cases that strike him as suspicious. 

Is there a serial abductor in the Ardèche region who is abducting young women? 

Or are the missing girls simply runaways after all?

Armand uses a clever manoeuvre to get appointed as a special investigator on the case. There is just one catch: he is paired with Margaux David, an unconventional officer who refuses to conform. They have just one thing in common: both are outsiders within the Paris force, which would be only too happy to see the back of them.

What divides them is their mutual distrust. Only if they overcome it will they stand a chance of tracking down the ruthless kidnapper - someone who knows the region inside out and is always one step ahead of them. And the closer they get, the more dangerous the investigation becomes for them both.

The River's Grave (2026) is the first instalment in this new French Mystery series set in the stunning and remarkably beautiful Ardèche region of France.

The second instalment in the French Mystery series, Deadly Underworld, will be released on 19 December 2026, this time, set in the gloomy underworld of Paris.

About the author: Christophe Villain has spent his summers in France since childhood. After completing his studies, he worked for several years in Paris and along the French Atlantic coast. Now, as a lawyer, he combines his favourite hobbies: traveling to France, enjoying good food, and indulging in exciting crime novels. Armand de Varenne and Margaux David work on cold cases in some of Christophe Villain's favourite locations throughout France.

Rating: 5/5

"The Hermit"

Until the Last Penny (Novella) by Steve A Brous

About the book: "Pauli, don't do this."

Paul Ranzinni has spent his life as a made man in the Romano crime family. He has stolen, cheated, and killed. He has broken every commandment more than once.

But when his dying mother extracts one final promise, a confession to his priest brother Anthony, Paul finds himself face to face with a mercy he never expected.

Hours later, he is dead.

Now Paul stands on the shore of eternity, his sins laid bare before the judgment seat of Christ. Saved by the skin of his teeth, he is sentenced to five hundred years in Purgatory, beginning at the lowest level, where Hell and Purgatory overlap and the demons are allowed to torment him.

What follows is a journey through fire, confrontation, grief, and ultimately mercy, as Paul faces the consequences of every choice he ever made and discovers that salvation is only the beginning.

Until The Last Penny: A Catholic Novella of a Soul's Journey Through Purgatory (2026) is a gripping Catholic novella of sin, judgment, and the purifying love of God.

"You shall not leave until you have paid the very last penny." - Matthew 5:26

About the author: Steve Brous is a Catholic author and content creator from Springfield, Missouri. A convert to Catholicism in the early 90s, Steve's faith journey led him to the Traditional Latin Mass, which has been the cornerstone of his spiritual life ever since.

Steve is the host of I Miss Christendom, a YouTube channel dedicated to Traditional Catholicism, where he had built a community of nearly 26,000 subscribers around the beauty and depth of the traditional faith.

Until The Last Penny is his debut novel - a story born from his deep conviction that the ancient truths of sin, confession and Purgatory are not dusty theological abstraction, but living realities that touch every human soul.

A Mother's Letters: A Vision of Faith In Everyday Life by Concepción Cabrera de Armida (Conchita)

About the book: Readers who have enjoyed Conchita: A Mother's Spiritual Diary will not want to miss this remarkable collection of her letters to her family.

Blessed Concepción Cabrera de Armida (Conchita) lived all of the states of life possible for a Christian woman: she was a single young woman, a wife, the mother of nine children, a widow and a professed religious (at the hour of her death, by special permission of the Pope). 

Her life of continuous and intimate relationship with the Lord was expressed in a remarkable number of ways. She inspired the five Works of the Cross: 

1) the Apostleship of the Cross and the Covenant of Love with the Sacred Heart of Jesus (both for laity), 

2) the Fraternity of Christ Priest (for priests and bishops), 

3) the Sisters of the Cross of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (a contemplative congregation), and 

4) the Missionaries of the Holy Spirit (priests and brothers). 

In addition, she wrote one remarkable book after another, expressing her profound religious insights and her devotion to the Eucharist. 

But Conchita was not a cloistered religious or hermit writing in tranquillity. She was a busy wife, mother, and grandmother who lived during one of the most turbulent times in Mexican history - an age of religious persecution, revolution and economic depression.

These letters to her large and extended family express not only her spiritual wisdom but also her warm, human side as she lovingly guides, advises, and rejoices with the members of her family in good times and bad. 

A Mother's Letters: A Vision of Faith In Everyday Life (2004, 2022 current printing) is compiled and annotated by Sister Dolores Icaza Conrey, RCSCJ. Originally published in Spanish under the title Cartas de una madre de familia - Concepción Cabrera de Armida (1986), it has been translated into the English by Mary McCandless. 

A Mother's Letters: A Vision of Faith In Everyday Life is dedicated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

About the author: Blessed Concepción Cabrera de Armida, better known as Conchita, was born in San Luis Potosi on 8 December 1862 and died in Mexico, DF, on 3 March 1937. 

As a writer, she often aimed to show her readers how to love the Catholic Church:

"To love the Church is not to criticize her, not to destroy her, not to try to change her essential structures, not to reduce her to humanism, horizontalism and to the simple service of a human liberation. To love the Church is to cooperate with the work of Redemption by the Cross and in this way obtain the grace of the Holy Spirit come to renew the face of this poor earth, conducting it to its consummation in the design of the Father's immense love."

Wife, mother, widow, lay apostle, Catholic mystic and writer, Conchita was beatified in Mexico City on 4 May 2019 as the first Mexican laywoman to receive this recognition.

Who Is The Rich Man That Shall Be Saved? (The Early Church Today Series, Volume 7) by St Clement of Alexandria

About the booklet: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God,” said the Lord Jesus Christ, a statement that greatly astonished the disciples at that time and has continued to astonish many throughout the generations. 

St Clement expounded on the encounter between the rich young ruler and Christ, an encounter that showed high hopes at the start, yet ended with the rich man walking away in despair. 

Is it sinful to be rich? 

Can a rich person be saved? 

St Clement of Alexandria, a Church Father, who was born in the second century AD and became the head of the Catechetical School at Alexandria, answers these questions and others in this treatise, providing an understanding that is as relevant and applicable to us today as it was many centuries ago.

St Clement of Alexandria wrote the treatise Who Is the Rich Man That Shall Be Saved? (often titled Quis dives salvetur?) around 203 AD. Minor editing of the original translation was done by St Mary and St Moses Abbey, mainly changing archaic words to their modern counterparts. 

Who is the Rich Man That Shall be Saved? (1983, 2025) is translated by G W Butterworth.

About the author: Neither Clement's birthdate or birthplace is certain. It is speculated that he was born sometime around 150 AD. According to Epiphanius of Salamis, he was born in Athens, but there is also a tradition of an Alexandrian birth. His parents were pagans and Clement was a convert to Christianity. In the Protrepticus, he displays an extensive knowledge of Greek religion and mystery religions, which could have arisen only from the practice of his family's religion. Having rejected paganism as a young man due to its perceived moral corruption, he travelled in Greece, Asia Minor, Palestine, and Egypt. Clement's journeys were primarily a religious undertaking. In Greece, he encountered an Ionian theologian, who has been identified as Athenagoras of Athens; while in the east, he was taught by an Assyrian, sometimes identified with Tatian, and a Jew, possibly Theophilus of Caesarea.

In around 180 AD, Clement reached Alexandria, where he met Pantaenus, who taught at the Catechetical School of Alexandria. Eusebius suggests that Pantaenus was the head of the school, but controversy exists about whether the institutions of the school were formalized in this way before the time of Origen. Clement studied under Pantaenus, and was ordained to the priesthood by Pope Julian before 189. Otherwise, virtually nothing is known of Clement's personal life in Alexandria. He may have been married, a conjecture supported by his writings.

During the Severian persecution of 202–203, Clement left Alexandria. In 211, Alexander of Jerusalem wrote a letter commending him to the Church of Antioch, which may imply that Clement was living in Cappadocia or Jerusalem at that time. He died AD 220 at an unknown location. (Source: Wikipedia)

Beyond Possible (Autobiography) by Nimsdai Purja (1983-2026)

About the book: I wanted to show the world a new truth: that with bravery and enough heart and drive, the impossible is possible. Fourteen mountains on Earth tower over 8,000 metres above sea level, an altitude where the brain and body withers and dies. Until recently, the world record for climbing them all stood at nearly eight years. So I announced I was summiting them in under seven months . . .

People laughed. They told me I was crazy, even though I'd sharpened my climbing skills on the brutal Himalayan peaks of Everest and Dhaulagiri. But I possessed more than enough belief, strength and resilience to nail the job, having taken down enemy gunmen and terrorist bomb makers while serving with the Gurkhas and the UK Special Forces.

Beyond Possible (2020) is the brave and inspiring true story of renowned climber Nirmal Purja's mission to summit the fourteen highest peaks on Earth - as seen on Netflix.

About the author: Nirmal Purja, also known as Nims or Nimsdai, was a Nepali and British mountaineer. Before beginning a career in mountaineering, he served in the British Army with the Brigade of Gurkhas and later in the Special Boat Service (SBS), the special forces unit of the Royal Navy.

Purja climbed all 14 eight-thousanders (peaks above 8,000 metres or 26,000 feet) in six months and six days with the aid of bottled oxygen between April and October 2019; this was a record until it was broken in 2023. Purja was the first person to reach the summits of Mount Everest, Lhotse, and Makalu within 48 hours. In 2021, he and a team of nine other Nepalese climbers completed the first winter ascent of K2. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest mountaineers in history and a pioneer of modern mountaineering.

In 2018, Purja was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for outstanding achievement in extreme high-altitude mountaineering.

In 2023, he received an honorary degree from Loughborough University for his military service and his achievements as a multi-world record-breaking mountaineer.

On 30 July 2026, Purja and nine other climbers died in an avalanche on Pakistan's Broad Peak.

At The Foot Of The Cross by John Burger

About the book: Through times of trial, division, repression, and new growth, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church has remained faithfully at the foot of the Cross.

The leader of this Eastern Catholic Church, Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, grew up in Ukraine during a time when his Church was illegal, and his family had to carry out their religious practices in secret. Born in the western Ukrainian city of Stryi on May 5, 1970, he grew up hearing stories of his parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents who had to deal with the demands of shifting political situations and the conflicts of Eastern Europe. He studied for the priesthood in an underground seminary and learned from the witness of priests and bishops who were imprisoned for their faith - including some who lost their lives on account of their fidelity to Christ and his Church.

Today, in the interviews contained in this book, His Beatitude Sviatoslav Shevchuk offers deep insights about the direction in which the world is going, including the struggle the Church once again faces, thirty years after the fall of the Soviet Union, in light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

At the Foot of the Cross:Lessons From Ukraine, An Interview with Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk (2023) is dedicated to the People of Ukraine. 

About the author: John Burger has been working in religious journalism for almost three decades, beginning as a reporter for the New York archdiocesan weekly newspaper Catholic New York and later as a reporter and news editor at the National Catholic Register. Since 2013, he has written for the international Catholic website Aleteia.org. A graduate of Iona College in Rochelle, New York, Burger holds a Master's degree in English from Iowa State University. 

An 1847 Letter

Definition: Ultracrepidarian