English Church

Eve Mallow is looking forward to her 15 minutes of fame when Saxford St. Peter is chosen as the location for a new drama series. A devoted people-watcher, Eve is thrilled to learn that TV stars are just as glamorous - and tempestuous - as she’s always imagined. But then someone delivers a bouquet of poisonous flowers to the director Rufus Beaumont, making Eve worry that some of the rivalries she’s noticed are deadly serious. And when Rufus’ body is found in the church where the funeral scene took place, it’s clear that someone’s out for the kill in real life.

Still as fresh and relevant as when it was first released, The Faith makes the Catechism of the Catholic Church accessible to a new generation of listeners. Fr. Hardon helps to form Catholics in the faith by focusing on the principle points of doctrine, moral teaching, and spirituality conveyed so richly in the Catechism.

How (Not) to Be Secular is what Jamie Smith calls "your hitchhiker's guide to the present" - it is both a reading guide to Charles Taylor's monumental work, A Secular Age, and philosophical guidance on how we might learn to live in our times. Taylor's landmark book, A Secular Age (2007), provides a monumental, incisive analysis of what it means to live in the post-Christian present - a pluralist world of competing beliefs and growing unbelief. Jamie Smith's book is a compact field guide to Taylor's insightful study of the secular.

Amsterdam 1654: a dangerous secret threatens to destroy a young widow's new life. Following the sudden death of her husband, 25-year-old Catrin leaves her small village and takes a job as housekeeper to the successful Van Nulandt merchant family. Amsterdam is a city at the peak of its powers: science and art are flourishing, and Dutch ships bring back exotic riches from the Far East. When a figure from her past threatens her new life, Catrin flees to Delft. There, her painting talent earns her a chance as a pottery painter.

New York Times number-one best-selling author Jeffrey Archer is a master of the short-story form, creating classic tales beloved by his fans. Now the award-winning writer presents 20 of his most popular and fêted short stories in The Short, the Long and the Tall.

On June 17, 2015, Dylann Roof, a young White man, attended the Wednesday evening Bible study at the predominantly Black Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. An hour later, Roof pulled a concealed weapon and killed nine African Americans as they prayed, including Myra Thompson, the wife of Reverend Anthony Thompson. This audiobook is the account of Reverend Thompson's wife's murder, the grief he experienced, and the radical choice to forgive the killer. But beyond that, Reverend Thompson casts a compelling vision of the power of forgiveness to transform our lives.

For decades, we set our hopes on technology, politics, and the appearance of peace. We wanted to believe we were headed somewhere better - that progress was happening. But now, as our technology ensnares and isolates us, our politics threaten to tear us apart and our cultural decline continues to accelerate, people are understandably distressed. But throughout history, these periods of decline traditionally precede powerful spiritual renewal - and even revival. What if all the bad news in this world is actually good news for the church?

Your church has the opportunity of a lifetime. The world has shifted, and a new, brighter tomorrow awaits. The Church Revitalization Checklist is a tool to help you start fresh, leverage your strengths, and discover hidden opportunities for church growth.

Fatima, Portugal, 1917: The Virgin Mary appears to three peasant children, sharing with them three secrets, two of which are soon revealed to the world. The third secret is sealed away in the Vatican, read only by popes, and not disclosed until the year 2000. When revealed, its quizzical tone and anticlimactic nature leave many faithful wondering if the church has truly unveiled all of the Virgin Mary's words or if a message far more important has been left in the shadows.

In a breakthrough book first published in 1991, the authors address the dynamics in churches that can ensnare people in legalism, guilt, and begrudging service, keeping them from the grace and joy of God's kingdom.

American Grace takes its findings from two of the largest, most comprehensive surveys ever conducted on religion and public life in America, plus in-depth studies of diverse congregations---among them a megachurch, a Mormon congregation, a Catholic parish, a reform Jewish synagogue, and an African American congregation.

Bring It Out helps you understand that who you are matters even more than what you do; know why you're doing what you're doing; walk away from the familiar to embrace the future; stop playing the comparison game; find the significance you long for; slow down so your soul can catch up to your life; embrace front-end pain rather than live with back-end regret; and much more.

Haunted by a past she can't escape, Laura Cunningham desires nothing more than to keep her world small and precise - her quiet relationship and growing jewellery business are all she needs to get by. Until the day when Rob Blake walks into her studio and commissions a necklace that will tell his enigmatic wife Cat's life in charms.

Gyre finally sees a way to overthrow the all-powerful Twilight Order. But he'll have to gain the alliance of both the ghouls and the human rebels to the south in order to even stand have a chance. And uniting them won't be so simple. His sister, Maya, is still a soldier of the Order. But after clashing with her brother, she isn't so certain where her loyalties lie. Chasing the origins of a mysterious artifact to a long-lost library, she just might find the answers she's looking for.

The last thing Alice expects to see at her husband’s graveside on his birthday is a giant, talking frog. On closer inspection, it’s a grown man dressed as Kermit. Turns out Alice’s husband is buried next to Ben’s older brother Harry, who—as a parting practical joke in his will—insisted that Ben visit his grave each year, on this specific day, dressed in an as-yet-undisclosed pageant of embarrassing fancy dress.

In his four decades of urban ministry, Robert D. Lupton has experienced firsthand how our good intentions can have unintended, dire consequences. We fly off on mission trips to poverty-stricken villages, hearts full of pity and suitcases bulging with giveaways - trips that one Nicaraguan leader describes as effective only in "turning my people into beggars." In Toxic Charity, Lupton urges individuals, churches, and organizations to step away from these spontaneous, often destructive acts of compassion and toward thoughtful paths to community development.

The summer in question started out with hot, fun-filled days and new friendships. We had just turned thirteen and had our whole lives ahead of us. But that was before her. Before we became known as the Hixton Five and our lives become defined by one night. It’s hard to believe twenty years have passed since she was locked away. But now she’s free and strange things have started to happen. When I close my eyes, the creeping anxiety and fear is overwhelming and all too real. Because the monster is back, and I know she has a score to settle with us.

In the year since he was elected, Pope Francis' simple message of mercy, service, and renewal has spread to every corner of the world. Through his gentle demeanor, selfless actions, and welcoming call for service to others, he has captured the attention of a world longing for an authentic message of hope - we want to hear what he has to say. Collected from Pope Francis' speeches, homilies, and papers presented during the first year of his papacy, The Church of Mercy is the first Vatican-authorized book detailing his vision for the Catholic Church.

In January 2012, having covered a Somali pirate trial in Hamburg for Spiegel Online International, Michael Scott Moore traveled to the Horn of Africa to write about piracy and ways to end it. In a terrible twist of fate, Moore himself was kidnapped and subsequently held captive by Somali pirates for 977 days. Yet Moore’s own struggle is only part of the story: The Desert and the Sea falls at the intersection of reportage, memoir, and history.

Jon Ward's life is divided in half: two decades inside the evangelical Christian bubble and two decades outside of it. In Testimony, Ward tells the engaging story of his upbringing in, and eventual break from, an influential evangelical church in the 1980s and 1990s. Ward sheds light on the evangelical movement's troubling political and cultural dimensions, tracing the ways in which the Jesus People movement was seduced by materialism and other factors to become politically captive rather than prophetic.