Fiction

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 ...

Dr. Owen Whitfield is the elderly Oxford professor of history who first appeared in Michael O'Brien's novel The Father's Tale. In the events of The Sabbatical, which occur sometime later, Dr. Whitfield is looking forward to a sabbatical year of peace and quiet, gardening in his backyard, and tinkering with what he calls his latest unpublishable book. As the year begins, he is drawn by a series of seeming coincidences into involvement with a group of characters from across Europe, including a ...

One morning, attorney Dan Geary, seventy-seven years old, finds himself in the middle of a rolling, polychrome landscape. The greens are bold and bright. Birds sing in the distance. Tall grasses surge like a sea before the wind. He has never seen anything quite like it. But somehow--with the doctors and beeping monitors suddenly gone--he knows exactly where he is: the afterlife.What a relief not to be floating on a cloud, playing a harp. Instead, a hiking pack full of gear sits on his back, a...

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 in...

Adeline Rye adores books, history, and art but feels unseen in a society that values advance in medicine and technology above all else. With her father as the leader of their island civilization called Mirror, she has little room for error. To ensure peace and eliminate violence, the islanders are divided across three separate communities and commanded to abide by the 613 laws given to their leadership by The Originator. Forty years prior, The Originator guided the people to the safety of the...

"Twelve Great Books: Going Deeper Into Classic Literature" by Joseph Pearce invites readers on an enlightening journey through twelve pivotal works that have shaped Christian civilization and the landscape of world literature. Pearce, an acclaimed literary critic, explores the profound truths rooted within these classics, offering insights into their historical, biographical, and spiritual contexts. From the tragic depths of "Othello" to the redemptive beauty of "A Christmas Carol," Pearce ac...

"The Gaze of Jesus" by Riccardo Bacchelli, translated by Anthony Esolen, explores the life of the Gerasene demoniac after his miraculous healing by Jesus. Rejected from following Jesus closely, he struggles with his newfound freedom and seeks understanding of who Jesus truly is. Through encounters with figures like Herod, Herodias, and Judas, and amidst the complexities of first-century Jewish society, he embarks on a psychological, historical, and theological journey towards faith. This nove...

"Nature and history, the Liturgy and the Kalendar, contemporary events both public and personal-all snake their way through the thickets of metaphor in these poems. And the relation between time and Eternity is never far away."-AIDAN NICHOLS, OP, formerly Pope John Paul II Memorial Lecturer in Roman Catholic Theology, University of Oxford"Anna Rist's second volume of poems is a joy to read. The collection exalts not just in the Body of Christ but in people and places of importance to her. All...

Ethan McQuarry is a young lighthouse keeper on a tiny island, the rugged outcropping of easternmost Cape Breton Island on the Atlantic Ocean. A man without any family, he sees himself as a silent vigilant, performing his duties courageously year after year, with an admirable sense of responsibility. He cherishes his solitude and is grateful that his interactions with human beings are rare. Even so, he is haunted by his aloneness in the world and by a feeling that his life is meaningless. His ...

"Jane Austen's brilliantly sophisticated teenage writings constitute her beginnings as a writer. We see in the works in this volume the sheer fun of her early sketches and their ridicule of human foibles, her parody of the absurdities of romance and sentimental fiction, her decision-making over choice of word and incident, her changing attitude towards character and style, and especially her early fascination with wordplay and hidden meanings that reveal her sprightly imagination." —From the ...

"'Better be without sense than misapply it as you do.'" Emma Woodhouse— "rich, handsome and clever"— is every bit that rich and that handsome, but perhaps not as clever as she believes. Residing in the quietness of rural England at the turn of the 19th century, the young heiress has as yet no intention of marrying, but enjoys playing the matchmaker among her acquaintances. Supposing she arranged her governess's marriage, she then takes for a protégé Harriet, a simple-minded girl of humble and...

"She was not often invited to join in the conversation of the others, nor did she desire it. Her own thoughts and reflections were habitually her best companions; and, in observing the appearance of the country, the bearings of the roads, the difference of soil, the state of the harvest, the cottages, the cattle, the children, she found entertainment that could only have been heightened by having Edmund to speak to of what she felt." In early 19th century England, Fanny Price, at ten years ol...

The Eddan Collective is a campus novel, a prophecy of the university in the near future, and a reflection on intellectual pride. In the year 2016, one Annika Trent, scholar of the late Roman Empire, founds the Eddan Collective, a group of Marxist faculty planning for the imminent collapse of American society. Annika's memoir details her struggles with her Eddan collaborators, her chronic illness, and her ability to "send herself away" to fifth-century North Africa, where she converses with St...

This book invites the reader into a cloister of poems, there to look with eyes of faith through the arches of rhythm and rhyme onto the wide vistas, terrible chasms, and hazy mountains of Mystery, Beauty, and Love. Written by monks of Silverstream Priory, some poems let memory and imagination search the corners of the earth, there to glean the sorrows, hopes, and joys of men, and so present them to the Father. Others draw from the deep wells of tradition, with verse translations of ancient La...

(and A Young Poet's Elegy to the Court of God) A Traditional Play in Blank Verse The preternaturally great poet Orpheus has responded to the loss of his wife Eurydice to the Underworld by forsaking the society of his fellow men in Thrace, where he was a poet-king, and endlessly wandering through field and forest, using his poetic genius to lament his loss. Apollo, the god of poetry, urges him to give up his excessive mourning and return to Thrace and once more sing the deeds of the great hero...

“If adventures will not befall a young lady in her own village, she must seek them abroad.” Irony, witty banter, and all the wisdom that defines Jane Austen's novels, pour forth from every page of Northanger Abbey. At the end of the 18th century, as Gothic literature was especially popular, an avid reader of such novels— young, affectionate, and unworldly Catherine Morland, the daughter of a country clergyman— sets off for the high society of lively Bath, thus to begin an adventure of her own...

"I wish as well as everybody else to be perfectly happy; but, like everybody else it must be in my own way." Following the death of Mr. Dashwood, a beloved father and noble squire, his widow and three daughters look to John Dashwood, a son by Mr. Dashwood's first wife, to ensure their financial security now that he is to come to Sussex to inherit Norland. But as an avaricious man under the influence of a manipulative wife, John soon convinces himself he is not betraying his father's dying wis...

"She was not often invited to join in the conversation of the others, nor did she desire it. Her own thoughts and reflections were habitually her best companions; and, in observing the appearance of the country, the bearings of the roads, the difference of soil, the state of the harvest, the cottages, the cattle, the children, she found entertainment that could only have been heightened by having Edmund to speak to of what she felt." In early 19th century England, Fanny Price, at ten years ol...

“If adventures will not befall a young lady in her own village, she must seek them abroad.” Irony, witty banter, and all the wisdom that defines Jane Austen's novels, pour forth from every page of Northanger Abbey. At the end of the 18th century, as Gothic literature was especially popular, an avid reader of such novels— young, affectionate, and unworldly Catherine Morland, the daughter of a country clergyman— sets off for the high society of lively Bath, thus to begin an adventure of her own...

"She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older— the natural consequence of an unnatural beginning." Eight years ago, Anne Elliot drew back her consent to marry Fredrick Wentworth, the headstrong and spirited naval commander of a yet-certain career or established fortune, in the conviction that she acted for his own good. Forbearing, selfless, and pensive, she would as yet have married him against the wishes of her vain and rank-obsessed father, Sir Walt...

"'For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?'" Set in the English countryside at the turn of the 19th century, Pride and Prejudice opens upon the excitement of the Bennet family of Longbourn Estate when a rich, eligible, and unsuspecting gentlemen has taken residence at nearby Netherfield. In the interest of financial security, little can deter Mrs. Bennet from doing all she can to encourage a marriage between amiable Mr. Bingley and one her five ...

"'Better be without sense than misapply it as you do.'" Emma Woodhouse— "rich, handsome and clever"— is every bit that rich and that handsome, but perhaps not as clever as she believes. Residing in the quietness of rural England at the turn of the 19th century, the young heiress has as yet no intention of marrying, but enjoys playing the matchmaker among her acquaintances. Supposing she arranged her governess's marriage, she then takes for a protégé Harriet, a simple-minded girl of humble and...

In this #1 international bestseller, a young woman leaves everything behind to work as a librarian in a remote French village, where she finds her outlook on life and love challenged in every way. Prudencia Prim is a young woman of intelligence and achievement, with a deep knowledge of literature and several letters after her name. But when she accepts the post of private librarian in the village of San Ireneo de Arnois, she is unprepared for what she encounters there. Her employer, a book-lo...

"She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older— the natural consequence of an unnatural beginning." Eight years ago, Anne Elliot drew back her consent to marry Fredrick Wentworth, the headstrong and spirited naval commander of a yet-certain career or established fortune, in the conviction that she acted for his own good. Forbearing, selfless, and pensive, she would as yet have married him against the wishes of her vain and rank-obsessed father, Sir Walt...

"'For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?'" Set in the English countryside at the turn of the 19th century, Pride and Prejudice opens upon the excitement of the Bennet family of Longbourn Estate when a rich, eligible, and unsuspecting gentlemen has taken residence at nearby Netherfield. In the interest of financial security, little can deter Mrs. Bennet from doing all she can to encourage a marriage between amiable Mr. Bingley and one her five ...