Fiction

Julia's Gifts
Great War-Great Love Book 1
by Ellen Gable

As a young girl, Julia bought gifts for her future spouse. After the US enters the Great War, she impulsively enlists as an untrained medical aide. Disheartened by war, will Julia abandon the pursuit of her beloved? From Philadelphia to war-torn France, follow Julia as she transitions from unworldly young woman to compassionate volunteer.

Paperback, size 8" x 5", 210 pages

Charlotte's Honor
Great War-Great Love Book 2
by Ellen Gable

After enlisting as a medical volunteer during the Great War, Charlotte finds her true purpose in life by holding dying men's hands and singing them into eternity. Just as the war is coming to a close, Charlotte is surprised by two events that are destined to change her life forever.

Paperback, size 8" x 5", 225 pages

In the Workshop of St. Joseph
by Fr Joseph Heuser, D.D.

In the Workshop of St. Joseph, presents the reader with a fictional account taking place at the time of the Holy Family's flight to Egypt, and later return to Nazareth.

It follows several fictional characters, Eliab, his daughter Zelah who becomes a servant for the Holy Family, and his son Ahijah, all of whom are Jews living in Egypt. Zelah accompanies the Holy Family back to Nazareth, and Eliab and Ahijah follow them, ultimately taking up residence in Nazareth itself. The story allows Fr. Heuser not only to illustrate the circumstances in Israel during the first century, the rites and ceremonies of the Jews which the Holy Family knew and participated in, but also the prefigurement of the Messiah in the Scripture, as well as the spiritual and moral meaning of the tools in Joseph's workshop.

In the Workshop of St. Joseph is a beautiful and spiritually enriching story for youth and adults alike, weaving Fr. Heuser's erudition and use of 1st century archeology with a wonderful and pious story.

Paperback, size 8.5" x 5.5", 250 pages

Also available in Hardcover with dust jacket upon request (additional cost)

Dying for Revenge
by Barbara Golder

Someone is killing the rich and famous residents of Telluride, Colorado, and the medical investigator, Dr. Jane Wallace, is on a collision course with the murderer. Compelled by profound loss and injustice, Jane will risk her own life to protect others from vengeful death, even as she exacts a high price from those who have destroyed her world.

Dying for Revenge is a story of love, obsession and forgiveness, seen through the eyes of a passionate, beautiful woman trying to live her life -- imperfectly but vibrantly -- even if she won't survive.

Paperback, size 8.5" x 5.5", 368 pages

A Soldier Surrenders
The Conversion of St. Camillus de Lellis
by Susan Peek

There are very few stories written about the life of St. Camillus, but his life story is one that both the young and old would do well to hear. In a style very captivating, Mrs. Peek imparts the fascinating story of this great saint who - at an early and rebellious age - went off to become a 16th century soldier-of-fortune. A belligerent and often brash young soldier, this self-seeking Camillus de Lellis frequently gives in to his passion for gambling and drinking, leaving him, for the most part, in dire straits. And though he sometimes cooperates with grace, he always seems to find himself back in trouble. Ultimately pushed to the brink of utter despair and humiliation, this stray and obstinate soul finally surrenders to the King of Kings, and the soldier of fortune becomes a soldier of Christ. An inspiring story of perseverance and the eventual surrender to the Divine Will.

Paperback, size 8.5" x 5.5", 228 pages

Father Malachy's Miracle
by Bruce Marshall

Father Malachy Murdoch has wrought a miracle. One ordinary-seeming Saturday night in Edinburgh, the “Garden of Eden” dance-hall is doing a very brisk business, when the answer to Father Malachy’s prayer arrives all of a sudden: the building and its inhabitants are removed to the island of Bass Rock. The consequences of this miracle seemingly know no bounds. The media, the clergy, the scientists, the general public all converge in seeking an explanation, whether material or spiritual, as to how this event could have transpired. At the center of the controversy and chaos calmly stands Father Malachy, disdaining both the crass excesses of the world and the pusillanimous explications found even among Christians, and laying claim to the the simple saving grace of God for his wandering sheep.

Brought, at long last, back into print, Father Malachy’s Miracle is just as clever, comedic, and downright enjoyable as the day it first unassumingly appeared as “a heavenly story with an earthly meaning.”

Paperback, size 8.5" x 5.5", 200 pages

A Thread of Scarlet
by Bruce Marshall

Léon Bloy’sThe Pilgrim of the Absolute offers one of the epigraphs to A Thread of Scarlet: “When we are not talking to God or for God, it is to the devil that we speak, and he listens to us in a formidable silence.” Donald Campbell, convert to Catholicism, confronts this conditional daily—for he is a priest. And as the devil says to the priest in Georges Bernanos’ Under the Sun of Satan, “I have you all numbered. Not one of you escapes me.” Father Campbell, however, as he moves from priesthood to episcopacy to the crowning achievement of a cardinal’s red hat, gives the lie to this boast of the Father of Lies. Determined to serve the Church and spread Christ’s Gospel, Father Campbell must accept that the Lord’s ways are not his ways, and that the only means to prove one’s own goodness is on the grounds of God’s good graces.

A worthy successor to Marshall’s Father Malachy’s Miracle and The World, the Flesh, and Father Smith, A Thread of Scarlet presents in riveting detail and with scintillating dialogue the drama of one man’s priestly life.

Paperback, size 8.5" x 5.5", 200 pages

The Month of Falling Leaves
by Bruce Marshall

Professor of philosophy Harold Hilliard is the author of The Symphony of Discord, a metaphysical treatise on the “Dysteleological Surd”—the physical suffering which seemingly serves as proof against the existence of a benevolent Creator. Its limited sales in England notwithstanding, Symphony of Discord is a success in—of all places—Poland. Arriving in Warsaw for a lecture to the Metaphysical Society, Hilliard is mistaken for a British Secret Service agent and rapidly becomes embroiled in international espionage. Despite his best efforts to persuade Agent Karminski of the PZPR’s intelligence service to the contrary, Hilliard’s every move only serves as further evidence of his new identity as MI5’s new man in Poland and draws him deeper into the bewildering world of Cold War spies.

The Month of Falling Leaves is a diverting story, swirling with suspicions and suspense, of scholar versus spy behind the Iron Curtain.

Paperback, size 8.5" x 5.5", 170 pages

House of Cards
by Alice Curtayne

At the age of seventeen, Anne Farrelly leaves her hometown in the West of Ireland for England, eager for the adventure of education and the promise of a career to follow. In the decade that follows, Anne works up from a lowly position at a struggling English school to a directorship at an Italian firm’s Rome offices, all the while contending with the question of whether she must be married in order to find true fulfillment. Through every turn—romantic, tragic, or comedic—Curtayne presents the concrete difficulties, fraught decisions, and testing freedoms in the life of a young woman.

Paperback, size 8.5" x 5.5", 235 pages

Father Brown
by G. K. Chesterton

Father Brown first made his appearance in "The Innocence of Father Brown" in 1911.

This collection contains all of the Father Brown stories, showing thr quiet wit and compassion that has endeared him to many, whilst solving his mysteries by a mixture of imagination and a sympathetic worldliness in a totally believable manner.

Paperback, 411 pages

The Accounting 
by Bruce Marshall

A fraud has been committed! Or so, at least, do the directors of Shinto and Dunsmuir’s British and Overseas Banking Corporation have “every reason to believe.” Their belief turns the ordinarily routine event of the annual audit of financial accounts into a tense, even dangerous, investigation for the staff of Cloudridge, Parkinson, Talisman, Steeple and Co. Set in 1930s Paris, against the backdrop of the actual “Stavisky Affair,” The Accounting follows this group of overtaxed auditors, prisoners of their own discontent, as they navigate an immense and intricate maze of actuarial and personal mistakes and corrections, all in hot pursuit of fraud and fraudster—seeing in the possibility of success a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for proper self-advancement.

Taking a minor thematic departure from his more consciously religious fiction, Marshall still surrounds this cost-counting drama and its characters with a tangible quality of authenticity and solicitude. First appearing in 1958, The Accounting is a characteristically clever and witty entry in Marshall’s ledger.

Paperback, size 8.5" x 5.5", 320 pages

Vespers in Vienna
by Bruce Marshall

The year is 1946. The Second World War is over but the tranquility of order is hardly restored to the city of Vienna. Charged by the Allied administrators “to rehabilitate Austria”—with a particular responsibility towards all “displaced persons”—the British Colonel Nicobar and his staff take up residence in the convent of the Daughters of the Holy Ghost, where they live under the noble auspices of the Reverend Mother Auxilia. The imperturbable serenity of the convent and its religious inhabitants throws into sharp relief the frantic and frenzied nature of life for the occupiers of Vienna and the illusiveness of the peace that they seek to impose on the city.

Replete with the larger-than-life characters typical of Bruce Marshall’s fiction, Vespers in Vienna refuses to sacrifice intelligence and nobility to the interests of humor and romance in telling its tale. The result is an astute satire, comparable to Waugh’s Sword of Honor trilogy, boasting that rare blend of spiritual power and rich entertainment.

Paperback, size 8.5" x 5.5", 210 pages

The Light Invisible
by Msgr Robert Hugh Benson

The Light Invisible presents a series of interconnected supernatural short stories. His brother, Arthur, remarked of this volume, "The Light Invisible always seemed to me a beautiful book. ... It was the first book in which he spread his wings, and there is, I think, a fres and ingenuous beauty about it, as of a delighted adventure among new faculties and powers."

Paperback, size 8.5" x 5.5", 112 pages

So Much Generosity
by Michael D. Greaney

The late Dr. Ralph McInerny, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame du Lac, once commented that some Catholic novels are so good, they're bad. He meant that the heroes are so virtuous that you simply can't believe them. Worse, the novels try so hard to be "Catholic" that they fail to be catholic, that is, universal, or even any sort of realistic commentary on the human condition.

Worst of all are probably the novels that try to imitate the authors profiled in this appreciation of the fiction of Nicolas Cardinal Wiseman(1802-1865), John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-1890), and Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson (1871-1914). Part of this is due to the fact that many people misunderstand not only why these writers wrote, but what they wrote. Benson's wonderfully barbed satire, for example, endeared him to Evelyn Waugh, yet it is often characterized as "prophecy"!

This collection of biographical sketches and essays by Mr. Michael D. Greaney,  does much to dispel the misimpressions and misunderstandings many people might have of the novels of Wiseman, Newman, and Benson. More than that, this compendium introduces these works to a new generation of readers, and makes it clear that the authors wrote for everyone, not just for Catholics, or even Christians.

Paperback, size 8.5" x 5.5", 268 pages

The Ballad of the White Horse
by G.K. Chesterton

The Ballad of the White Horse is one of the last great epic poems in the English language. On the one hand it describes King Alfred’s battle against the Danes in 878. On the other hand it is a timeless allegory about the ongoing battle between Christianity and the forces of nihilistic heathenism. Filled with colorful characters, thrilling battles and mystical visions, it is as lively as it is profound.

Chesterton incorporates brilliant imagination, atmosphere, moral concern, chronological continuity, wisdom and fancy. He makes his stanzas reverberate with sound, and hurries his readers into the heart of the battle.

This deluxe volume is the definitive edition of the poem. It exactly reproduces the 1928 edition with Robert Austin’s beautiful woodcuts, and includes a thorough introduction and wonderful endnotes by Sister Bernadette Sheridan, from her 60 years researching the poem. Illustrated.

Paperback, size 8.5" x 5.5", 280 pages

This Thing of Darkness
by Fiorella De Maria and K.V. Turley

Hollywood, 1956. Journalist and war widow Evangeline Kilhooley is assigned to write a "star profile" of the fading actor Bela Lugosi, made famous by his role as Count Dracula. During a series of interviews, Lugosi draws Evi into his curious Eastern European background, gradually revealing the link between Old World shadows and the twilight realm of modern horror films.

Along the way, Evi meets another English expatriate, Hugo Radelle, a movie buff who offers to help with her research. As their relationship deepens, Evi begins to suspect that he knows more about her and her soldier husband than he is letting on. Meanwhile, a menacing Darkness stalks all three characters as their histories and destinies mysteriously begin to intertwine.

Paperback, size 8" x 5.25", 280 pages