Gilead by Marilynne Robinson - One of Loome's Top 5 Novels

Dear Misfits,

I am pleased to report, we have another winner!  Gilead by Marilynne Robinson was warmly praised by all who read it.  I personally found it to be one of the most moving books I have ever read.  Misfit Loome places it in the top five novels he has read.  We all want to thank Misfit Gatschet for recommending the book.

Why the high praise?  Simply because Robinson's prose is completely captivating--the woman can tell a story!  And the story is told in a letter the Reverend John Ames, a 77 year old Congressionalist preacher, is writing to his 6 year-old son.  It is his attempt to give an account of himself to his son as he tells him of his forebears, all men of the cloth.  It is also a story of the sacred bonds formed by fathers and sons and the manner in which they are tested by the challenges imposed by these bonds.

As you begin to read the letter Reverend Ames is composing for his son, you learn that he is physically ailing even though he is still mentally sharp.  His letter reveals him as a deeply pious man who considers the Bible an incontrovertible source of moral authority. He describes life as “the great bright dream of procreating and perishing.” and speaks of the “courage and loneliness” of every human face. 

I am tempted to draw a comparison between Flannery O'Conner and Marilynne Robinson in what I think are two areas of distinct similarity.  First, both novelists depict a God-haunted existence in the lives of their main characters.  God is a presence in their lives and redemptive grace always a possibility.  Secondly, Robinson like O'Conner, tells her story largely through a male protagonist.  This is especially the case with Gilead where women and the feminine are sparingly portrayed.  In fact, women seldom speak or intersect with the largely masculine story line as related through the voice of Reverend Ames.

Some might ask, "Yes, but is this a Catholic novel?  I thought the Misfits was a Catholic Men's Reading Group."   I would argue that if you are a Catholic with a strong fundamentalist bent (me!), you will read this novel as a deeply Christian expression of faith.  Hence, it is a Catholic novel!

Yours in Christ,

Misfit Buzz

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TOWN REWRITES CODE TO KEEP ONE SMALL BUSINESS REACHING A GLOBAL CLIENTELE

Relocating the Largest Theological Bookstore in the World to a nearby Family Farm Required Negotiations with Town Officials, and More Than 100 Minivan and Trailer Loads

In early 2012 when Christopher Hagen, proprietor of Loome Theological Booksellers of Stillwater, MN, decided to relocate the bookstore, he had no conception of the obstacles he would face in accomplishing the move.  After finding the perfect new location on a farm in West Lakeland Township, Hagen soon discovered that the town code prohibited operating a business of the scale of Loome Booksellers from the farm site.  In addition, Hagen faced the seemly insurmountable task of moving the largest theological bookstore in the world, consisting of nearly 100,000 books, while keeping the doors open and filling internet orders.  Undaunted, Hagen plunged into negotiations with town officials to get the code changed, while his employees began to dismantle and pack up the bookstore from its original location in a vertically challenging 100-year-old church building.  From September through December Hagen attended meetings with town officials regarding the change in town code while supervising the bookstore move.  Finally, Hagen got a green light from the town officials and an approved revision to the town code shortly before Thanksgiving, just in time to open for business on the farm.  Now he is putting the finishing touches on the new Loome Theological Booksellers farm location just in time for the Grand Opening Celebration on April 26 and 27.

Christopher and his wife, Christelle, dreamed for 15 years of running a bookstore together and living on a farm with their 5 children.  In the winter of 2012 they decided to fulfill that dream by aiming for something they’d never heard of before: a bookstore combined with a family farm.  However, there were two obstacles to fulfilling their dream; they didn’t have a farm and Christopher owned a bookstore with nearly 100,000 volumes, a daunting amount to consider moving.  Since the early 1980s the bookstore was in the landmark 100 year old Swedish Covenant church building near downtown Stillwater, MN.  Packed with books and bookcases lining the walls, stairwells, and balconies, the store was a destination for spiritual bibliophiles from all over the world, many making annual “pilgrimages” to buy books.  How could Christopher move out of that location with only a handful of employees while keeping the internet orders, the primary revenue stream, open and working efficiently?  “When first deciding to move the bookstore,” Christopher says “I didn’t have a clue as to how we would actually move it.  I just decided it had to be done”.  First, however, they needed a farm to move the bookstore to.

“Thanks be to God,” Christopher says “my wife, Christelle, loves to comb craigslist for houses!  We had set a deadline of June 30^th, 2012 for finding a farm.  On June 30^th my wife spotted a craigslist ad for the farm we now live on.”  The farm location was better than the Hagens thought possible.  Not only did it have a beautiful restored farm house, but it also had a shed large enough to hold all the books with an already finished portion as ideal retail bookstore space.  Also on the property was a separate building suitable for hosting speaking events and reading groups, a long term desire for the bookstore.  To top it off there was enough field acreage to begin their adventures in family farming.  There was only one significant catch.  The property was in West Lakeland Township, MN which had a home occupation code that allowed a home based business to have only one employee on-site.  There were 3 full-time and 3 part-time employees at the bookstore.

“I decided to appeal to the town board to allow all my employees to work from the farm location since they are what make this business great and the farm was big enough that I couldn’t use it effectively without them,” Christopher says.  During the first meeting with the town board, the board indicated that they were willing to try and make changes so that the bookstore could continue at the farm with all the employees.  It took three more monthly meetings before the revisions to the town code became law, just in time for Hagen to open for business at the farm Thanksgiving 2012.  “I was so pleased to see local government do what it could to help my family live and work on a farm together and also keep all my employees together,” says Chris “I’m very grateful”.

Moving the bookstore was physically daunting, somewhat dangerous, and very long.  For four months, sawing and pulling apart bookcases, packing thousands of books, loading the moving minivan and trailer in rain, snow, and ice was routine for the bookstore.  “I couldn’t have done it without my ingenious, efficient, and dedicated employees,” said Hagen, “many volunteers helped as well.  There was great goodwill from unexpected places during the move.  I can’t believe we did it”.

The last load from the old location arrived at the farm the Friday before Christmas.  During the winter the bookstore has continued to build bookcases and unpack books at its new location at 2270 Neal Ave. N.  Now, to celebrate the relocation and successful move, Loome Theological Booksellers is holding a two-day Grand Opening celebration on Friday and Saturday April 26 and 27.  All books will be on sale at 20% off.  On Friday evening customers may attend a talk entitled “The Family Farm and the Restoration of Society” and on Saturday morning attend a talk on England’s famous convert, John Henry Newman, entitled “Newman’s Quest for a Real Spiritual Life”.  Visit www.LoomeBooks.com for more information.  There will also be refreshments and tours.

Loome Theological Booksellers was founded in 1981 to provide discerning readers with good hard-to-find or out-of-print books in the Christian theological and intellectual tradition.  Visitors come from all over North America and Europe to browse the largest selection of theological books found in one place.  Thousands of books are purchasable online through www.LoomeBooks.com

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LOOME THEOLOGICAL BOOKSELLERS COMBINES BOOKS AND A FAMILY FARM FOR THE NEW EVANGELIZATION

Inspired by the Writings of John Paul II, Peter Maurin, and St. Anthony Marie Claret Loome Theological Bookstore relocates to Claret Farm in Stillwater

As Peter Maurin, one of the founders, along with Dorothy Day, of the Catholic Worker movement, wrote it is time “to blow the dynamite of the church”. The dynamite to which Maruin referred was the Catholic Church’s counter-cultural social teaching.  After 10 years of studying the writings of John Paull II on work and the new evangelization, Peter Maurin on the restoration of society, and St. Anthony Marie Claret on sustainable family farm life, Christopher Hagen, proprietor of Loome Theological Booksellers of Stillwater, MN, decided to blow the dynamite of the church by relocating the bookstore  to a nearby family farm.  In August of 2012 he moved his family to the farm which they christened Claret Farm, and then soon commenced moving the largest theological bookstore in the world, consisting of nearly 100,000 books.  From September through December the move continued while his family began the adventure of farm life.  This Spring, Hagen is putting the finishing touches on the new Loome Theological Booksellers farm location just in time for the Grand Opening Celebration on  Friday and Saturday April 26 and 27.

Christopher and his wife, Christelle, dreamed for 15 years of running a bookstore together and living on a farm with their 5 children.  Along the way, primarily under the influence of the Stillwater Catholic Worker community, they encountered and studied the writings of John Paul II and Peter Maurin.  John Paull II taught them that “work is for family” and therefore the parents’ careers should serve the family and conform to the family’s needs, not the other way around.  Maurin often wrote in pithy energizing phrases like “eat what you raise, and raise what you eat”.  Maurin also advocated the "agronomic university", a place where he envisioned that workers could become scholars and scholars could become workers.  Maurin taught that the house of hospitality for the poor was necessary, but should be considered as Phase One in a broader plan to renew a dying society.  For Maurin, who had grown up in an agricultural region in France, the house of hospitality necessarily must be followed by a Phase Two, during which individuals and families would learn to provide for themselves, instead of relying on the generosity of others or being dependent on the government.  This process of learning and training was to be carried out in the “agronomic university”.

While preparing a lesson for her homeschooled children, Christelle studied St. Anthony Marie Claret, a nineteenth-century priest, apostle and missionary, who was archbishop of Santiago, Cuba.  While archbishop, Claret wrote a book on farming, originally published in Spanish, that encouraged families to work small farms and own small businesses, because he believed that this provided stability for families and for society.  He encouraged small family farmers to grow a diversity of crops, so that they would be less dependent on the large sugar farms of the day.  He even tried to open a school much like Maurin’s vision of an “agronomic university”!

Challenged and set on fire by these ideas, in the winter of 2012 Christopher and Christelle decided to do what they could to fulfill John Paul II’s call for the new evangelization by aiming for something they’d never heard of before: a bookstore combined with a family farm.  However, they had little hope of finding a location for this farm/bookstore idea to put down roots.  “Thanks be to God,” Christopher says “my wife, Christelle, loves to comb craigslist for houses!  We had set a deadline of June 30^th, 2012 for finding a farm.  On June 30^th my wife spotted a craigslist ad for the farm we now live on.”  The farm location was better than the Hagens thought possible.  Not only did it have a beautiful restored farm house, but it also had a shed large enough to hold all Loome Theological Bookseller’s  books with an already finished portion as ideal retail bookstore space.  Also on the property was a separate building suitable for hosting speaking events and reading groups, a long term desire for the bookstore and classroom space for an “agronomic university”.  To top it off there was enough field acreage to begin their neophyte adventures in family farming.

Hagen finished moving Loome Theological Booksellers the Friday before Christmas.  During the winter the bookstore has continued to build bookcases and unpack books at its new location at 2270 Neal Ave. N.  Now, to celebrate the relocation and successful move, Loome Theological Booksellers is holding a two-day Grand Opening celebration on Friday and Saturday April 26 and 27.  All books will be on sale at 20% off for customers who browse in-store.  On Friday evening customers may attend a talk entitled “The Family Farm and the Restoration of Society” and on Saturday morning they may attend a talk on England’s famous convert, John Henry Newman, entitled “Newman’s Quest for a Real Spiritual Life”.  Visit www.LoomeBooks.com for more information.  There will also be refreshments and tours.  Visit www.LoomeBooks.com for more information.

Loome Theological Booksellers was founded in 1981 to provide discerning readers with good hard-to-find or out-of-print books in the Christian theological and intellectual tradition.  Visitors come from all over North America and Europe to browse the largest selection of theological books found in one place.  Thousands of books are purchasable online through www.LoomeBooks.com.

Claret Farm put down roots in the fall of 2012.  Read more about Claret Farm at www.ClaretFarm.com.

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Books and the Conversion of Saint Augustine

Dear Misfits,

We've finished reading another classic of Catholic literature, St. Augustine's The Confessions.   For me, it was also one of the most compelling conversion stories I have ever read.  In this remarkable autobiography, St. Augustine, a 40 something Bishop, sets out to write of his journey of faith from his birth to his "second birth" when he is received into the Catholic Church.  Every part of St. Augustine's story is as relevant today as it was 1600 years ago when he wrote his "confession".

One of the most striking things about The Confessions is the role that books played in the eventual conversion of St. Augustine. The books that Augustine read throughout his life were the guides used by God to bring him into the Faith. One of the most compelling stories related by St. Augustine is the scene with the children in the garden chanting "tolle lege, tolle lege" ("Pick up and read, pick up and read").  (See Book VIII, Chapter 12)  He turned to the Bible, read the first lines that came to him, and was converted to the Faith when he read the words that lay before him: "Not in dissipation and drunkenness, nor in debauchery and lewdness, nor in arguing and jealousy; but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh or the gratification of your desires." (Romans 13: 13-14).  There are many other examples in The Confessions where St. Augustine was moved by books but it was the book of Paul's letters that was the occasion of his accepting Christ and the gift of faith.  

The Confessions is, simply put, a spiritual classic.  And again, I recommend the translation by Sister Maria Boulding, OSB as edited by Father David Meconi, S.J., and published by Ignatius Press as a "Critical Edition". I think it is simply the most readable translation that is out there. (Ok, you defend the translation that you read...I think think that the Ignatius Edition is the best!)

And now to the future:

For March, we have chosen to read Marilynne Robinson's highly acclaimed novel, Gilead. The novel won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was a 2004 National Book Critics Circle Winner. Gilead is the fictional autobiography of the Reverend John Ames, an elderly Congregationalist pastor in the small, secluded town of Gilead, Iowa who knows that he is dying of a heart condition. The novel begins in 1957 as the Reverend Ames explains that he is writing an account of his life for his seven-year-old son so his son will have memories of him after he is gone.

The story spans three generations from the Civil War to the twentieth century. It is a profound examination of the relationship of fathers and sons and the spiritual battles that still rage at America's heart. “Writing in the tradition of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, Marilynne Robinson's beautiful, spare, and spiritual prose allows "even the faithless reader to feel the possibility of transcendent order" (Slate)”. The luminous and unforgettable voice of Congregationalist minister John Ames reveals the human condition and the often unbearable beauty of an ordinary life. The novel is available at Amazon.com for $10.99.

For April, we will read a novel by Dean Koontz, an author who may surprise some of you. I've only recently learned that Koontz is a convert to the Faith and a wonderfully articulate one at that. We will read the first book in the Odd Thomas series (now four novels) called, strangely enough, Odd Thomas. Odd Thomas, who narrates the story, is odd indeed: only 20, he works contentedly as a fry cook in a small fictional California town, The story line of this novel, "like most great stories, runs on character-and here Koontz has created a hero whose honest, humble voice will resonate with many. In some recent books, Koontz has tended to overwrite, but not here: the narrative is as simple and clear as a newborn's gaze. This is Koontz working at his pinnacle, providing terrific entertainment that deals seriously with some of the deepest themes of human existence: the nature of evil, the grip of fate and the power of love." The novel is available at Amazon for $9.99.

For May, we will read an autobiography that will resonate with and enlarge upon a number of the fictional works we have read on the persecution of Priests and Catholics during Elizabethan England. We will read The Autobiography of a Hunted Priest written by Father John Gerard, SJ. Father Gerard was a remarkable Priest at a time when being a Catholic in England invited torture and imprisonment; to be a Priest was treason as declared by act of Parliament. The book is available from Amazon for $10.64.

Finally, let me wish each of you a joyous Christmas and a very happy and healthy New Year. I look forward to another year of reading with you and encourage you to submit any recommendations you may have on books you want us to read. (I have attached an updated list of books we have already read along with a consolidated list of authors.)

Our next meeting will be on March 13, 2013, at 7:30 pm in the St. Thomas More Library at The Church of St. Michael in Stillwater, MN.

Yours in Christ,

Misfit Buzz

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The Whole Thing

If you like looking at great books like we do, check this one out:

It is:
Biblia, Das ist: Die gantze Heilige Schrifft, Alten und Neuen Testaments. Nach der U[e]bersetzung und mit den Vorreden und Randglossen D. Martin Luthers, mit Neuen Vorreden, Summarien, weitläuffigen Parallelen, Anmerckungen und geistlichen Anwendungen, auch Gebeten auf jedes Capitel: Wobey zugleich Nöthige Register und eine Harmonie des Neuen Testaments beygefüget sind. Ausgefertiget unter der Aufsicht und Direction Christoph Matthäi Pfaffen...


In case you didn't get that, it is, to translate the German loosely: The Bible, that is: The entire Holy Scripture, Old and New Testaments [--the whole thing folks!--] with translation, preface, and marginal notes by Dr. Martin Luther, with [lots of other helpful information by others] under the direction of Christoph Matthäi Pfaffen.
 
Here are some fun facts about the book:

• It was published in 1729 by Cotta
• One of the rare complete copies still in existence.
• 1830 pages, plus prelims
• Bound in pigskin over wood boards
• Remnants of the embellished brass clasps remain
• Copper engraved headpieces, initials and plates (2 double)
• Engraved maps of Jerusalem, Palestine, and a military map of the children of Israel
• Contains the Apocrypha
•  Ink inscription in a fine German hand on the front paste-down and first front endpaper (traced to Stuttgart) as shown here:

This rare and beautiful book is available for sale on our website at the following link:
https://www.loomebooks.com/StoreWant.cfm?BookID=56628

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Misfits: At Years End

Dear Misfits

I now report the end of another year of reading the wonderful books of our Catholic Literary Tradition. We closed our year with a meeting on 12-12-12.

We discussed  Fabiola or The Church of the Catacombs by Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman. The story is set in Rome in the early 4th century AD, during the time of the persecution of Christians under the Roman Emperor Diocletian. The novel was written in 1854 and remains topical today. Christians around the world are suffering greatly for their faith. In that regard, German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently declared that Christianity is “the most persecuted religion” in the world today. It is so severe that a new word was recently added to our vocabulary: "Christianophobia". The word refers to two different, though related, phenomena:

    -The first "phobia" is the anxiety and antipathy that traditional Christianity creates in cultural and intellectual institutions in the West particularly in academia, journalism, publishing, and the entertainment industry. This is the “Christianophobia” to which the Holy Father often refers when he speaks of the growing “hostility and prejudice” against Christianity in Europe.

   -The second form of “Christianophobia” is a murderously different thing. In countries like Egypt, Mali, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Syria, Christians are being murdered and forced to leave their homes in record numbers. Churches are being destroyed and Christian villages emptied in violent attacks by Islamists and Muslim radicals. “Phobia” describes this phenomenon, however, “phobia” may be too mild a term: what we are seeing in these places is an anti-Christian genocide.

Yet, as described in Fabiola, these times of persecution strengthen the Church both by the example of those who persevere in their faith and most dramatically, by the blood of the martyrs. We can also contribute by keeping our fellow Catholics in our prayers and in our support of efforts to counter the growing persecution of Christians around the world.

Now to the future:

For January and February we will read The Confessions, the autobiographical work of St. Augustine of Hippo, written between AD 397 and AD 398. The work consists of 13 books which outline Augustine's sinful youth and his conversion to Christianity. It is widely seen as the first Western autobiography and was an influential model for Christian writers throughout the following 1000 years of the Middle Ages. It is not a complete autobiography, as it was written in his early 40's. St. Augustine lived long afterwards and went on to write another important work The City of God. However, The Confessions does provide an unbroken record of the development of his thought and is the most complete record of any single person from the 4th and 5th centuries.

    For January we will read and discuss the first 7 books of The Confessions.

    For February we will read and discuss the remaining 6 books for a total of 13 books for the complete The Confessions.

I  have been reading the Ignatius Critical Edition of The Confessions edited by Fr. David Meconi, SJ and translated by Sr. Maria Boulding, OSB. I think it is a very accessible, excellent translation.  It is available from Amazon in Soft cover.

For March, we will read Marilynne Robinson's highly acclaimed novel, Gilead. The novel won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was a 2004 National Book Critics Circle Winner. Gilead is the fictional autobiography of the Reverend John Ames, an elderly Congregationalist pastor in the small, secluded town of Gilead, Iowa who knows that he is dying of a heart condition. The novel begins in 1957 as the Reverend Ames explains that he is writing an account of his life for his seven-year-old son so his son will have memories of him after he is gone.

The story spans three generations from the Civil War to the twentieth century. It is a profound examination of the relationship of fathers and sons and the spiritual battles that still rage at America's heart. “Writing in the tradition of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, Marilynne Robinson's beautiful, spare, and spiritual prose allows "even the faithless reader to feel the possibility of transcendent order" (Slate)”. The luminous and unforgettable voice of Congregationalist minister John Ames reveals the human condition and the often unbearable beauty of an ordinary life. The novel is available at Amazon.com.

For April, we will read a novel by Dean Koontz, an author who may surprise some of you.  I've only recently learned that Koontz is a convert to the Faith and a wonderfully articulate one at that.  We will read the first book in the Odd Thomas series (now four novels) called, strangely enough, Odd Thomas. Odd Thomas, who narrates the story, is odd indeed: only 20, he works contentedly as a fry cook in a small fictional California town, The story line of this novel, "like most great stories, runs on character-and here Koontz has created a hero whose honest, humble voice will resonate with many. In some recent books, Koontz has tended to overwrite, but not here: the narrative is as simple and clear as a newborn's gaze. This is Koontz working at his pinnacle, providing terrific entertainment that deals seriously with some of the deepest themes of human existence: the nature of evil, the grip of fate and the power of love." The novel is available at Amazon.

For May, we will read an autobiography that will resonate with and enlarge upon a number of the fictional works we have read on the persecution of Priests and Catholics during Elizabethan England. We will read The Autobiography of a Hunted Priest written by Father John Gerard, SJ. Father Gerard was a remarkable Priest at a time when being a Catholic in England invited torture and imprisonment; to be a Priest was treason as declared by act of Parliament.

Finally, let me wish each of you a joyous Christmas and a very happy and healthy New Year.  I look forward to another year of reading with you and encourage you to submit any recommendations you may have on books you want us to read.  (I have attached an updated list of books we have already read along with a consolidated list of authors.)

Misfit Buzz

****************************

“E-readers may bulk out millions of stockings this season.   Yet the works you read on them remain ghostly, intangible files, hard to transfer easily as gifts or loans between readers or (most) devices, thanks to the fences erected around them by "digital rights management". So, however much you adore your iPad or Kindle, why not renew your acquaintance with the joy of the printed volume as a source of festive delight this year….each book a valuable object to have – and to hold.”

            -The Independent, Nov 25, 2012

   

Author List

Peter Ackroyd

            The Life of St. Thomas More (November, 2007)

Saint Augustine of Hippo

            The Confessions (January-February 2013)

Anonymous   

            The Way of A Pilgrim (April, 2009)

Lucy Beckett

            A Postcard from the Volcano (February-March 2012)

            The Time Before You Die  (September, 2012)

Hilaire Belloc

            The Four Men: A Farrago (October, 2008)

Fr. Robert Hugh Benson

            Lord of the World (December, 2004)

Georges Bernanos

            The Diary of a Country Priest (July, 2003)

William Blatty

            Dimiter (November, 2010)

Willa Cather

            Death Comes for the Archbishop   (September, 2002)

            My Antonia (December, 2011)

G. K. Chesterton

            The Ball and the Cross (January, 2003)

            The Innocence of Father Brown (April, 2003)

            The Ballad of the White Horse and Lepanto (February, 2004)

            The Man Who Was Thursday (March, 2005)

            Saint Thomas Aquinas  (May, 2007)

            Saint Francis of Assisi (June/July, 2007)

            Orthodoxy  (May, 2008)

            Manalive (October, 2009)

Fr. Walter J. Cizsek, S.J.

            He Leadeth Me (April, 2012)

Myles Connolly

            Mr. Blue (October, 2005)

           

Thomas B. Costain

            The Silver Chalice (September-October, 2006)

A. J. Cronin

            The Keys of the Kingdom (February, 2005)

            The Citadel (December, 2006)

Louis de Wohl

            The Spear (November, 2006)

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

            The Brother’s Karamazov (September –December, 2003)

            The Great Short Works of Fyodor Dostoevsky (July, 2010)

Eamon Duffy

            The Stripping of the Altars (November-December 2009)

Paul Elie

            The Life You Save May Be Your Own (August,/September, 2007)

T. S. Eliot

            Murder in the Cathedral (February, 2010)

Shusako Endo

Silence  (October, 2002)

            The Samurai  (March, 2009)

Father John Gerard, SJ

            The Autobiography of a Hunted Priest (May,2013)

Jose Maria Gironella

            The Cypresses Believe in God (February-May, 2006)

William Golding

            Lord of the Flies (July, 2008)

Rumor Godden

            In This House of Brede (December, 2005)

Roger Lancelyn Green

            The Adventures of Robin Hood (August, 2009)

Graham Greene

            The Power and the Glory (November, 2002)

            A Burnt-out Case (March, 2007)

            The Heart of the Matter (February, 2009)

            Brighton Rock (June, 2009)

Ron Hanson

            Mariette in Ecstasy  (October, 2007)

            Exiles (September, 2008)

Jon Hassler

            Dear James (April, 2010)

Nathaniel Hawthorne

            The Scarlet Letter (May, 2012)

John W. Kiser

The Monks of Tibhirine: Faith, Love and Terror in Algeria (October, 2012

Fr. Ronald A. Knox

            The Viaduct Murders (January, 2009)

Dean Koontz

            Odd Thomas (April 2013)

 

C. S. Lewis

            The Screwtape Letters (September, 2004)

            The Great Divorce (July, 2009)

            Til We Have Faces (February, 2010)

Francois Mauriac

            The Woman of the Pharisees (June, 2003)

            Viper’s Tangle (January, 2006)

Walter M. Miller, Jr.

            A Canticle for Leibowitz (January, 2012)

Czeslaw Milosz

            The Issa Valley (November, 2008)

Father Peter Milward, S.J.

            A Commentary on the Sonnets of G. M. Hopkins (December, 2008)

Brian Moore

            Catholics (August, 2008)

            Black Robe (October, 2010)

Sir Thomas More

            Utopia (August, 2006)

Blessed John Henry Newman

            Loss and Gain (January, 2011)

Michael D. O’Brien

            Father Elijah (January, 2004)

            Island of the World (February, 2010)

Flannery O’Connor

            A Good Man is Hard to Find (December, 2002)

            Everything That Rises Must Converge (December, 2007)

Walker Percy

            The Moviegoer (May, 2003)

            The Thanatose Syndrome (February, 2007)

J.F. Powers

            Morte D’Urban (March, 2003)

Piers Paul Read

            The Death of a Pope  (September, 2009)

Marilynne  Robinson

            Gilead (March 2013

Sir Walter Scott

            Ivanhoe (April, 2005)

Dorothy Sayers

            Unnatural Death (February, 2011)

William Shakespeare

            The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (June, 2012)

Mary Shelley

            Frankenstein (October, 2010)

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

            One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (July, 2006)

Murial Spark

            Memento Mori (January, 2007)

J.R.R. Tolkien

            The Hobbit (May, 2010)

Leo Tolstoy

            The Great Short Works of Leo Tolstoy (June, 2010)

Mark Twain

            Joan of Arc (October, 2004)

Sigrid Undset

            Kristin Lavransdatter I:  The Wreath (May, 2005)

            Kristin Lavransdatter II:  The Wife (August, 2005)

            Kristin Lavransdatter III:  The Cross (September, 2005)

            The Master of Hestviken:  The Axe  (January, 2008)

            The Master of Hestviken:  The Snake Pit (February, 2008)

            The Master of Hestviken:  In the Wilderness (March, 2008)

            The Master of Hestviken:  The Son Avenger (April, 2008)

Evelyn Waugh

            Brideshead Revisited (February, 2003)

            Officers and Gentlemen (April, 2004)

            Unconditional Surrender (May, 2004)

            The Loved One  (November, 2004)

            Helena (November, 2005)

            Edmund Campion (April, 2007)

Morris West

            The Devil’s Advocate (May, 2009)

Oscar Wilde

            The Picture of Dorian Gray (June, 2006)

Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman

            Fabiola or The Church of the Catacombs (November-December, 2012

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