Fiction
A Novel of the Crucifixion
by Louis de Wohl
This novel of the last days of Christ ranges from the palaces of Rome to the strife-torn hills of Judea - where the conflict of love and betrayal, revenge and redemption, reaches a climax in the drama of the Crucifixion. For this is the full story of the world's most dramatic execution, as it affected on of its least-known participants - Longinus, the man who hurled his spear into Christ on the Cross.
Among his many successful historical novels, Louis de Wohl considered The Spear the magnum opus of his literary career.
Paperback, size 8" x 5.25", 401 pages
by Msgr Robert Hugh Benson
This third of Rober Hugh Benson's "mainstream" novels, The Coward may have been the most shocking to the upper class sensibilities of Benson's day. A young man is faced with challenges and manages to fail at every step. He becomes convinced he is an irredeemable coward - and only then begins to find courage. In a damning indictment of close-minded Edwardian society, a supreme act of courage on the young man's part is mistaken for yet one more craven act.
Paperback, size 8.5" x 5.5", 312 pages
May Day!
A Father Gabriel Mystery #6
by Fiorella de Maria
Spring has come to the abbey, and the community is busily preparing for the May Day weekend and the arrival of Boy Scouts who will hold their annual camp on the abbey grounds. When a Boy Scout named Antoine is sent home in disgrace, Fr Gabriel accompanies him to his house, which has become the scene of a violent crime. Antoine’s father, Charles, has been found dead, apparently killed during a botched burglary.
Suspecting there was more to the crime than what first meets the eye, Fr Gabriel joins forces with Inspector Applegate to learn about Charles Nicholson, a quiet family man with no obvious enemies. The victim, however, had been married to a fiery French resistance fighter, a union that had caused considerable excitement in the sleepy village.
It doesn’t take long for Gabriel to notice that Brigitte Nicholson’s life – and courageous death in wartime France – has had a dramatic effect upon her surviving family. Gabriel’s quest for the truth leads him into the brutal world of Nazi-occupied France, where resistance fighters like Brigitte were betrayed by their most trusted friends. Could Brigitte’s betrayer and Charles’ killer be one and the same person? And could the shadowy figure menacing Gabriel be the murderer he is trying to hunt down?
This sixth installment of the Father Gabriel series explores the murky world of wartime treason, profiteering, and betrayal. The story also involves the return of some characters from earlier in the series.
Paperback, size 8" x 5.25", 280 pages
Manalive
by G. K. Chesterton
Introduction by Dale Ahlquist
This classic novel by the brilliant G. K. Chesterton tells the rollicking tale of Innocent Smith, a man who may be crazy-or possibly the most sane man of all. Arriving at a dreary London boarding house accompanied by a windstorm, Smith is an exuberant, eccentric and sweet-natured man. Smith has a positive effect on the house-he creates his own court, brings a few couples together, and falls in love with a paid companion next door. All seems to be well with the world.
Then the unexpected happens: Smith shoots at one of the tenants, and two doctors arrive to arrest him, claiming that he's a bigamist, an attempted murderer, and a thief. But cynical writer Moon insists that the case be tried there-and they explore Smith's past history, revealing startling truths about what he does. Is he the wickedest man in Britain, or is he "blameless as a buttercup"?
Beautifully written, mixing the ridiculous with the profound, full of hilarious dialogue and lushly detailed writing, Chesterton's main character Innocent Smith somehow manages to restore joy to all the dull and cynical lives around him. In this delightfully strange mystery, Chesterton demonstrates why life is worth living, and that sometimes we need a little madness just to know we are alive.
Paperback, 200 pages
Death of a Scholar
A Father Gabriel Mystery #2
by Fiorella De Maria
Father Gabriel spends a few days of relaxation at his old Cambridge College, the guest of friend Arthur Kingsley from his student days. Kingsley is now a respected scientist and a Fellow of St Stephen's College, but after an enjoyable evening dining at High Table, Gabriel receives the shattering news that Daphne Silverton, Kingsley's brilliant young protégée, has been found dead in her laboratory after what appears to have been a tragic accident. Daphne was universally loved, but Gabriel's instincts tell him that her death was a little too perfectly staged to have been an accident.
After an emotional reunion with the parents of his late wife, Gabriel seeks the truth about Daphne's demise. His investigations lead him to the Peace Union and its Ban the Bomb campaign, another member of Daphne's laboratory is found dead. Gabriel struggles to lay aside his personal loyalties and confront the possibility that there are dark secrets lurking behind both deaths.
This fourth book in the popular Father Gabriel series examines the moral minefield of the complicity of scientists in the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction. It also reveals more about Gabriel's past.
Paperback, size 8" x 5.25", 262 pages
The Vanishing Woman
A Father Gabriel Mystery #3
by Fiorella de Maria
In this next book in the Father Gabriel mystery series, the priest detective tries to solve the riddle behind the disappearance of the most hated woman in town.
Enid Jennings, a retired headmistress and an embittered war widow, has a talent for causing conflict and distress wherever she goes. When Enid's daughter sees her vanish into thin air, she is widely assumed to have been mistaken or to have lost her mind – or worse, to have committed an act of foul play.
Enter Father Gabriel. Working on the principle that some stories are too strange to have been made up, the priest sets out to discover the whereabouts of the missing woman. With help from the town's physician, and hostility from the irascible Inspector Applegate, Father Gabriel delves into Enid Jennings' past, and he digs up the recent past of the whole village during the days of the Phony War, when invaders lay in wait across the Channel and crimes were just a little easier to hide.
Paperback, size 8" x 5.25", 246 pages
The Flying Inn
by G.K. Chesterton
The beloved G.K. Chesterton presents a well-crafted and joyous work of political fantasy about a small group of rebels who rail against the government’s attempt to impose prohibition in England.
Humphrey Pump, a pub owner, accompanied by Captain Patrick Dalroy, a flamboyant giant with a tendency to burst into song, take to the road in a donkey cart with a cask of good rum, a large block of cheese, and the signpost from his pub, The Flying Inn. The two men bring good cheer to an increasingly restless populace as they attempt to evade the law. In a journey that becomes a rollicking madcap adventure, the two travel round England, encountering revolution, romance, and a cast of memorable characters.
Paperback, 305 pages
A Most Dangerous Innocence
by Fiorella de Maria
It is 1940, the time of the Phoney War. Britain stands alone with German invaders waiting across the Channel and an anxious population preparing for the bloody battle ahead. In an isolated girls' boarding school, sixteen-year-old Judy Randall watches the coming of war with a mixture of fascination and fear. She is a misfit in an institution that prizes conformity; a Catholic with Jewish heritage at a time when anti-Semitism is still commonplace. Most inconveniently of all, she is autistic, and her behavior is misunderstood as merely eccentric and insolent.
Bored and frustrated by her inability to help the war effort, Judy becomes obsessed with the idea that her hated headmistress is a Nazi, and she goes to increasingly reckless lengths to prove her theory. In the meantime, the adults of the school busy themselves with planning how best to protect the children in their care if occupying forces overrun the country. For teacher John Peterson, who has seen armed conflict before, his own agonizing history forces him to consider what sacrifices he might have to make if the horrors of the war overtake them all.
A Most Dangerous Innocence offers a glimpse into the early days of the Second World War, seen from a sleepy corner of Britain. It is also a meditation on childhood guilt, innocence, loyalty, and the courage to stand alone.
Paperback, size 8" x 5.25", 214 pages
by Henry Garnett
It was fall 1570, and rumors of an invasion by the Turks were spreading throughout Venice. Down by the docks, Guido Callata listened to the sailors as they discussed past battles and speculated about more fighting in the future. From the altar of St. Mark's, a message from His Holiness Pope Pius V had been read, calling for crusade to repel Turkish advances. A fleet of Venetian and Spanish vessels would be assembled, and Guido's father, like other wealthy Venetians, had agreed to build and equip a galley for the Christian fleet. Secretly, Guido hoped to sail to battle with his father's crew; instead, he was whisked off to the safety of a monastery, far from the excitement of the Venetian waterfront. How Guido finally manages to join the fleet and help to defeat the Turks in the memorable Battle of Lepanto is a colorful tale of danger, suspense, and adventure in sixteenth-century Italy.
Paperback, size 8" x 5.2", 186 pages
Wanderings Over the World
Three Works in One
by G. K. Chesterton
Gilbert Keith Chesterton needs no introduction. A master of the literary craft, he wrote over eighty books, hundreds of poems and short stories, and thousands of essays. Wanderings over the World collects three early works — The Napoleon of Notting Hill; The Man Who Was Thursday; and The Ballad of the White Horse — that capture his brilliant vision of God, man, and the cosmos, and his power to bring that vision to life with the written word.
The Napoleon of Notting Hill promises a "banquet of humour" when Auberon Quin takes the throne of England and re-establishes the provincial pomp and status of the boroughs of London. But the joke is undone when the guileless Adam Wayne declaires war rather than cede Notting Hill to the armies of industrial expansion.
The Man Who Was Thursday is a political thriller, detective story, and metaphysical treatise, all tied into one. Gabriel Syme's infiltration of an anarchist organisation sets off a series of bewildering events that bring hunter and hunted together in a terrifying conslusion.
The Ballad of the White Horse recounts King Alfred the Great's defeat of the Danish army at the Battle of Ethandum. A poetic tapestry of theology, allegory, and history, The Ballad endures as one of the greatest English epic poems of all time.
Paperback, size 8.5" x 5.5", 360 pages
A Dystopian Future as seen by a Catholic Priest
Annotated Version
by Msgr Robert Hugh Benson
A PRIEST’S PROPHETIC VISION OF SOCIETAL AND MORAL DECLINE
Lord of the World is a riveting apocalyptic novel that foretold the future with frightening accuracy. Written in 1907 by Fr. Robert Hugh Benson, this prophetic book contains a dystopian vision that is perilously close to being realized fully today.
Though released over a century ago, the issues and themes Lord of the World explores are startlingly contemporary. Through his masterful writing, Benson transports readers to a disturbing political environment where religion is abolished, euthanasia is encouraged, and an all-powerful secular government rules with an iron fist. It is a world where humanity has lost its moral compass and individual freedoms are severely restricted.
Lord of the World is astonishing in the accuracy of its predictions, from the erosion of spirituality to the rise of anti-Catholic regimes. The pace of social and moral decline examined in Benson’s work has only accelerated in the decades since it was first published, making this landmark of Catholic literature as relevant today as it was upon publication.
This annotated edition provides readers with concise chapter-by-chapter summaries that include helpful elucidations of the text. By contextualizing Benson’s masterpiece, this edition serves to deepen the reader’s appreciation of the author’s immediate concerns at the dawn of the 20th century while grasping its continuing relevance to the beleaguered early decades of the 21st.
Hardcover, size 9.25" x 6.25", 409 pages
by Msg. Robert Hugh Benson
Who was young Sir Neville Fanning? Why did he call himself a Catholic, and at the same time, lament that he wasn't a very good one? He was convinced that there was something deeper than conventional religion. Denying the cross again and again, he couldn't bear to suffer - even though at every turn Our Lord called him to Himself. He simply could not see the point in submitting to the Divine Will. His "initiation" is a beautiful story of how the surrender was asked - and then won in the end!
Hardcover, size 8.25" x 5.75", 447 pages
by Marie de Sainte-Hermine
Inspired by first hand accounts, this touching story of the French Revolution is a great example of the popular Catholic literature of the 19th century. Plunged into the disasters following the murder of Louis XVI, Marie de Sainte-Hermine recounts, as only a grandmother can, the history of her noble family and their struggle against the tyranny of the Revolution. The reader learns of her guilded childhood in the manor house of Bois-Joli, and follows her through the tragic hours of the Vendean War of 1793, the massacres and atrocities of the revolutionaries, and the sinister prison of Nantes, where her family paid the ultimate price. Through the darkness of the Terror, however, shines the light and power of Christian nobility and virtue - a lesson fit for all ages.
Paperback, size 9" x 6", 357 pages
by G. K. Chesterton
A unique collection of ten of Chesteron's famous Fr. Brown mysteries that emphasises the role of Brown's Catholic faith in helping solve the murders. Special deluxe edition of these excellent detective stories with footnotes and introduction by John Peterson.
Sewn softcover, 270pp,
by Eloisle Lownsbery
Jean D'Orbais was born under the shadow of Reims Cathedral. From his earliest childhood he sees it growing in beauty through the efforts of the master craftsmen who are at work on it. When he is ten years old, he is apprenticed to a goldsmith, and begins his education in the arts. The story of his career, his escapades, his ambitions, and his final success, is enthralling. But it is not Jean alone who interests us. Through his eyes the child sees the bustling town of Reims in the fourteenth century, with its crafts and guilds, its merchants and its beggars, its nobles and its soldiers. He hears too of the Maid of Orleans, and her fight for France.
Miss Lownsbery combines historic truth and accuracy with an interesting and living story. No textbook would give a child so vivid a picture as this does, and few other stories will so completely capture their imagination.
Hardcover, size 8.25" x 5.75",
by Howard Pyle
Written and illustrated in 1903, at the height of children’s literature, these books have inspired generations to greatness of thought and the acquisition of true virtue. The first book in this four volume series for children focuses on the tale of the future King Arthur and how he came to win his famous sword and to create his round table.
Give your children a vision of a world in which virtue and beauty matters and these truths will stay with them for their entire lives!
Paperback, size 10" x 7", 313 pages
by Msgr Robert Hugh Benson
Tudor England has become a house divided against itself. As King Henry VIII, the self-anointed “Supreme Head of the Church of England,” wreaks destruction and despoilment upon the monasteries and convents of his country, he also unwittingly brings to fulfillment the prophecy in the Gospel of Luke: “Father shall be divided against the son, and the son against his father…” (12:53). At the center of The King’s Achievement are Sir James and Lady Torridon, their sons, Ralph and Christopher, and their daughters, Mary and Margaret. With their loyalties divided between God and Caesar, the Torridons follow divergent paths; yet the nature of the national and ecclesial crisis is such that all paths must converge at the juncture of salvation or damnation.
Substantively and stylistically superb, The King’s Achievement—as Francis X. Connolly describes in his Foreword—“does what good historical fiction should do: it renders a complex historical situation justly and it brings characters to life in a story that is interesting for its own sake,” and achieves a dramatic balance of scholarly composure and ardent lyricism.
Paperback, size 9" x 6", 388 pages
Part VI
by Fr Owen Francis Dudley
In the fictional novel Fr Dudley provides us with a character study of Gordon Tremayne.
Fr. Dudley writes in the notes of this book “we are apt, rather smugly I think, to place certain characters beyond redemption. My choice of Gordon Tremayne has been deliberate, for the reason that humanly he seemed unredeemable. In the event he proved otherwise - owing to the monk acting on the principle of the potentially reclaimable deep down. The Gordon Tremaynes of this world are not uncommon, whose cruelties cry to heaven for vengeance, and yet remain untouched by law. Beyond human reach they may be, but not beyond reach of the Divine.”
Hardcover, size 7.75" x 5.25", 333 pages
Saint Dymphna of Ireland
by Susan Peek
An insane king. His fleeing daughter. Estranged brothers, with a scarred past, risking everything to save her from a fate worse than death. Toss in a holy priest and a lovable wolfhound, and get ready for a wild race across Ireland. Will Dymphna escape her deranged father and his sinful desires? For the first time ever, the story of Saint Dymphna is brought to life in this dramatic novel for adults and older teens. With raw adventure, gripping action, and even humor in the midst of dark mental turmoil, Susan Peek's newest novel will introduce you to a saint you will love forever! Teenage girls will see that Dymphna was just like them, a real girl, while young men will thrill at the heart-stopping danger and meet heroes they can easily relate to. If ever a Heavenly friend was needed in these times of widespread depression and emotional instability, this forgotten Irish saint is it!
Paperback, size 9" x 6", 316 pages