Biography & Autobiography

The Oxford Inklings tells the story of the friendships, mutual influence, and common purpose of the Inklings - the literary circle which congregated around C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Meeting in pubs or Lewis's college rooms, they included an influential array of literary figures. They were, claimed poet and novelist John Wain, bent on 'the task of redirecting the whole current of contemporary art and life'.

Tolkien and Lewis expert Colin Duriez unpacks the Inklings' origins, relationships, and the nature of their collaboration. He shows how they influenced, encouraged, and moulded each other. Duriez also covers the less celebrated Inklings, neglected, he claims, for too long.

What did they owe - and offer - to the more acknowledged names? What brought them together? And what, eventually, drove them apart from their initial focus upon each other's writings?

Dorothy L. Sayers was a woman of contrasts.

A strong Christian, she had a baby - out of wedlock - by a man she did not love. Possessing a fierce intellect, she translated Dante, and also created one of the most popular fictional detectives ever in Lord Peter Wimsey.

Drawing on material often difficult to access, particularly her collected letters, Colin Duriez reassesses Sayers’ life, her writings, her studies, and her faith to present a rich and captivating portrait of this formidable character.

The remarkable story of Canon Andrew White, a man of great charm and energy and one of the world's most trusted mediators and reconcilers.

Combined together in a single volume for the first time, The Vicar of Baghdad and My Journey So far tell the story of how Andrew overcame a childhood beset by illness to become an anaesthetist and then a vicar in the Church of England. As Vicar of St George’s Baghdad, the only Anglican church in Iraq, he leads a team providing food, health care, and education on a major scale and often in dire circumstances. He has had a considerable role in the work of reconciliation, both between Christian and Jew and between Shi’ite and Sunni Muslim.

Andrew is widely recognised to be one of a tiny handful of people trusted by virtually every side in the complex Middle East. Despite dealing with the pain from multiple sclerosis and facing extreme personal danger, he has nevertheless been able to mediate between opposing extremes. Political and military solutions are constantly put forward, and constantly fail. Andrew offers a different approach, speaking as a man of faith to men of faith. He is trusted by those who trust very few.

'An irresistible biography of one of Oxford's most colourful characters.' John Hedley Brooke

In 1824, William Buckland stood in front of the Royal Geological Society and told them about the bones he had been studying - the bones of an enormous, lizard-like creature, that he called Megalosaurus.

This was the first full account of a dinosaur.

During his life, Buckland would also demonstrate changes in the earth's climate, champion health reform, wage war on slum landlords, and become infamous for eating everything he could, even a mummified human heart. Yet his name has been largely, and unjustly, forgotten.

In this brilliantly entertaining, colourful biography - the first to be written for over a century - Allan Chapman brings William Buckland back into the light and explores his fascinating life in full. From his pioneering of geology and agricultural science to becoming Dean of Westminster, Caves, Coprolites and Catastrophes reveals a giant of intellect whose achievements helped revolutionise the British scientific community.

Carefully balancing Buckland's more eccentric escapades with his scientific prowess and the clash between science and religion in the 19th Century, Caves, Coprolites and Catastrophes is vivid, informative and thoroughly compelling.

A captivating story packed full of compelling insights into the world of Victorian science and its relationship with the Christian faith, Caves, Coprolites and Catastrophes is an unmissable biography of an exceptional scientist whose legacy extends down to this day.

A funny, life-affirming memoir, in diary form. Set in the manic world of a busy teacher, and based on real experiences, Fran Hill's account of one typical year shows it's not just the pupils who misbehave.

English teacher 'Miss' starts the Autumn term beleaguered by self-doubts. She's mid-menopause, insomniac, and Mirror and Bathroom Scales are blisteringly unsympathetic. Her pupils make her laugh, weep, fume and despair, often in the same lesson. Her unremitting workload blights family time and she feels guilty for missing church events to catch up on marking. After all, God-lady is watching.

Meanwhile, the new Head of Department seems unreachable, an Ofsted inspection looms, her sixth formers (against school policy) insist on sitting in rows, and there's a school magazine to produce...

When childhood secrets demand attention Miss doesn't want to give them, life gets complicated.

Keir Hardie was a founder and the first parliamentary leader of the Labour Party. At the turn of the 19th century he was Labour's most famous face. But despite being voted Labour's 'Greatest Hero' at the 2008 Party Conference, in recent years his extraordinary story seems all but forgotten.

Born illegitimate just outside Glasgow in 1856, his life didn't start gently. Before the age of 10, he was the sole wage earner in his working class, atheist family. He never went to school but was self-taught, avidly reading books lent him by a kind young clergyman. This led to two major conversions in his life: first to Christianity, and then to socialism.

While earlier biographies have neglected the former, pointing out his experience of hardship as the source of his passion for social justice, the role of Christianity in Hardie's life was profound. It shaped his involvement in many of the greatest social changes of the time.

John Milton has usually been regarded as 'the other great poet' in English literature, after Shakespeare. He is the only one of the world's great poets also to have been actively engaged in politics.

John Milton was born in 1608 and in the late 1630s he travelled to the Continent where he met, among others, Galileo and Grotius. A staunch republican, he served as Latin secretary to Oliver Cromwell during the Commonwealth. After the restoration of Charles II his life was probably saved by his fame as a poet. He was thrice married, his first two wives dying after childbirth.

This serious yet accessible biography by a renowed Milton scholar tells the story of Milton's fascinating and troubled life on both the personal and political level.

Claud was just six years old when he first held a gun in his hands. Now, over twenty years later, he is returning to communities just like the one he grew up in, this time holding a Bible.

Guns to God is the incredible autobiography of Claud Jackson, a young boy who became a drug dealer and professional criminal before giving his life to God through the Alpha Course and later being called to become a Christian minister.

Though exceptional in parts, Claud's journey is remarkably relatable: it is one of being shaped by circumstance and formed through faith, of losing yourself only to be found. Guns to God is an inspiring and thought-provoking Christian autobiography for anyone wanting a stronger understanding of and insight into the struggle against drugs and drug dealing in urban communities in the UK, and the role that the Christian faith has to play.

The story of one man’s search for belonging, this an incredible and moving testament to the life-changing power of God.

'If the English people were to be set a test to justify their history and civilization by the example of one man, then it is Sir Thomas More whom they would perhaps choose.' So commented The Times in 1978 on the 500th anniversary of More's birth.

Twenty-two years later, Pope John Paul II proclaimed Thomas More the patron saint of politicians and people in public life, on the basis of his 'constant fidelity to legitimate authority and ... his intention to serve not power but the supreme ideal of justice'.

In this fresh assessment of More's life and legacy, John Guy considers the factors that have given rise to such claims concerning More's significance. Who was the real Thomas More? Was he the saintly, self-possessed hero of conscience of Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons or was he the fanatical, heretic-hunting torturer of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall? Which of these images of More has the greater historical veracity? And why does this man continue to fascinate, inspire and provoke us today?

Isaac Liu, the son of Brother Yun, tells his own story of growing up under the hostile eyes of the Chinese authorities.

In the months before Isaac's birth, Brother Yun was in prison. His mother was about to be forced into having an abortion, though seven months pregnant, because she was carrying the child of an enemy of the state. After desperate prayer, the night before she was due to go into a hospital for the operation, she miraculously gave birth.

Isaac met his father for the first time at the age of four. With Brother Yun constantly on the run, and his mother working to feed the family, Isaac's grandmother cared for him. One day his mother was also arrested. Isaac and his sister were swiftly taken by local Christians to another town, where they registered at a school under false names. The family finally managed to flee to Burma, then to Thailand, and ultimately to Germany.

Isaac's mother had prayed that God would not call her son to be an evangelis--but his father had dedicated him to God. Isaac, now in his twenties, has embraced the call to be a pastor.

Across the world a girl is subjected to Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) - often without consent.

Health issues, trauma and unfulfilled economic potential are just some of the costs to over 200 million cut women and girls. Annually, three million girls currently remain at risk of FGM.

This book addresses some of the origins of FGM, while also telling the story of one woman willing to sacrifice her comfortable, professional London life to help end its practice. Volunteering across fourteen African countries, Ann-Marie Wilson trained in basic midwifery, ran a fistula rehabilitation project, and qualified in psychology and theology before launching her charity, 28 Too Many.

Built on the voices of over 3000 FGM survivors' stories as well as meetings with heads of state and the Pope, the book offers an insight into how Ann-Marie leaned on her Christian faith in her darkest moments to continue to offer hope.

If you are moved by a battle against the odds for justice, this book will inspire and encourage you to keep fighting for what is right.

"This is a beautifully written autobiography of a remarkable life. Farifteh Robb brilliantly tells her journey of faith and love across two cultures. I found it captivating and could not put it down." John Clark, Chairman of the Friends of the Diocese of Iran

Have you ever wondered what it is like to survive a revolution? To be a religious convert, adopting a different nationality and starting afresh in a new discipline? To fall deeply in love, despite the obstacles to a burgeoning relationship?

All of these things, and more, happened to Farifteh Robb. This is the fascinating and moving story of a woman's journey between two cultures - her Persian Muslim heritage and her Christian life in Scotland. It describes the challenges she faced in an Iran torn apart by political turmoil, and in her new life in the UK.

Written with passion, candid reflection, and a gentle wit, this is the story of a life lived in faith in a multicultural world.

If you loved the TV series 'Call the Midwife', this real life account of a young woman's journey from convent to casualty is just for you. Kicking the Habit is the story of Eleanor Stewart's transition from carefree young woman of the Beatles generation through to a reclusive life in a French convent and on to serving as an inner city midwife.

Beginning among the parties and nightclubs of the swinging sixties, Eleanor's story is one of drama, excitement, exhilaration and tragedy as she first gives up everything for the life of a nun, and then sacrifices the peace and tranquillity of the religious life for the business of bringing new life into the world she's denied, but must now re-enter.

Written with honesty and affection, this is an intimate portrait of convent and hospital life that will appeal to readers of biography, social history and the details often missing from fiction set in the rapidly changing social and spiritual world of the 1960s.

Justyn Rees Larcombe had it all. Around his beautiful home were the mementoes of success - the Sword of Honour awarded by the Queen when he left Sandhurst; the silver photo frames with the pictures of his much loved wife and family; the rooms full of the rewards of a City career.

But Justyn had a parallel life: he gambled.

Gradually he allowed it to take over everything, getting through a staggering three quarters of a million pounds - some his own money, some his wife's, and some belonging to the company he worked for. The crunch came: he lost his job; his wife left him, taking his sons; and anything that could be sold was - and then gambled away again.One day, he had no alternative but to go back to his mother's home and start again.

Today Justyn has a high profile in the media, talking about the dangers of gambling and helping others coping with gambling addiction.

500 years ago Luther set into motion a movement that would ultimately change the face of our world forever; the Reformation.

In Luther and His World you will discover the man behind the movement who led the rebellion against the established church.

The world of the early reformers is filled with danger, but also with purpose and passion. Martin Luther led battles, argued over doctrine and questioned how the church should go forward.

In Luther and His World Graham Tomlin examines the build up towards the greatest rebellions in church history. How did it all unfold? Where did it begin? Why did it happen? After exploring all these questions, Graham offers his conclusions over how Luther's writings and teaching have revolutionized our world.

Everyone interested in church history seeking a solid, accessible and engaging introduction to the Reformation and Martin Luther should read this book. It encapsulates the world in which the rebellion began and explains the outcomes of the revolutions with clarity and accuracy.

"An accessible account of Luther, his life, thoughts, writings and all that surrounded him. Tomlin's writing is readable and informative... For most people, this packed-full, not so little, littlebook will be just enough for them to feel that they now 'get' Martin Luther." - Church of England Newspaper

Trained as a midwife, Chrissie Chapman went to Burundi in the nineties to open a maternity clinic and dispensary in a rural area of the country. She had been there just three years when a coup was declared, and the country descended into a state of civil war. It lasted for thirteen long years.

During that time, God directed her to work with the orphans and widows. She started a centre for abandoned babies and traumatised children and saw the Lord performing remarkable miracles in the lives of people who had lost everything. Chrissie adopted three children herself, and has raised more than fifty others to young adulthood.

Again and again she has witnessed miracles of protection and provision. When the war started, Chrissie, her adopted children, and the health staff were living in a rural location on top of a mountain, in a healing centre, with maternity clinic and dispensary. Every night there was gunfire, and every day people would come seeking refuge.

One night, she and David Ndarahutse, the mission director, were sitting praying amid the fighting, when David said, 'Chrissie, look up.' There were dozens of angels standing on top of the walls of the healing centre.

That was the night the angels came. 'From that moment on,' Chrissie records, 'I have never experienced or felt fear for my life.' Today Chrissie divides her time between Burundi, where she continues to care for the teenagers in her charge, and England, Canada and America, where she speaks widely about the faithfulness and power of God.

Few who heard Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones preach will ever forget the experience, not because of his presence as a minister, but on account of the sense of wonder at the gospel that he conveyed.

Those, like the author, who had the privilege of knowing him up close, are uniquely placed to comment on his life and passion. Christopher Catherwood examines the remarkable legacy of his Welsh grandfather, tracing his relevance to the twenty-first century.

Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones was adamant that all doctrine and practice should originate in Scripture. This volume focuses on key principles, showing how these were arrived at using a biblical framework. The author looks at the controversies, but sets them in context. This is not a conventional biography, but one that sheds light on a hugely interesting era of UK evangelicalism, which we do well to remember.

While Gethin's mother spent most of the Second World War cracking German codes at Bletchley Park, his father was a conscientious objector.

As he grew up, and his mother maintained her Government-imposed silence on what she had been doing, Gethin's father was voluble on his pacifism, and Gethin dreaded the question 'What did your father do in the War?' The answer 'Nothing' seemed shameful.

Now, with his mother's story out in print, he sets off to find out why his father took the stance he did, the roots of the tradition of conscientious objection in the Welsh valleys, and how the family felt about the decision and the shame it brought.

In 2010, Ed Walker founded Hope into Action, a charity with a vision - of the church at the forefront of the fight against homelessness.

A House Built on Love tells the remarkable story of Hope into Action's rapidly-growing mission and how it has worked in partnership with churches to supply homes, support, friendship and love for the homeless and marginalized, earning the Guardian's Public Service Award in 2017 and an award from the Centre for Social Justice.

This is a powerful, eye-opening Christian autobiography that provides insight into the difficult reality of homelessness in the UK. With raw honesty Ed relates the struggle as he and his wife Rachel stepped out in faith, developed a new theology of sharing and saw both tragic and wonderful outcomes, and shows how we can meet and grow in Christ as we interact with those in the shadows and those hidden in darkness.

Visionary, inspiring and touching, A House Built on Love is a book for anyone who wants to know more about Hope into Action and their mission of housing the homeless. Their story will leave you with a stronger understanding of one of the most important social issues of today, and show how reaching out with love and compassion can have a life-changing impact.

This biography tells the story of John Wesley's colourful and dramatic life, beginning with his childhood and his family background, looking especially at the influence of his powerful and austere mother, Susannah.

The author then goes on to examine Wesley's school and university careers (including the Holy Club), his mission to Georgia and finally his "conversion" and mission to England - including the organisation of methodist societies. Key issues in Wesley's life, such as his renunciation of wealth and the role of women, are given prominent treatment as is an assessment of Wesley's long-term impact both in this country and abroad.

'Call the Midwife compellingly transposed from the East End of London to the Borneo rainforest'
Lynne Tembey, Mothers' Union Worldwide President

1959. Newcastle nurse Wendy Grey leaves her comfortable life and answers a call from people in Borneo to run a clinic in a place so remote, many there have never before seen a white woman. Until her arrival, medical witchcraft has been the norm. Nevertheless, Wendy quickly gains the trust of the locals, and they begin to flock to her for treatment. And - terrifyingly - when some require emergency surgery, she must also become anaesthetist and surgeon... or watch her patients die.

From treacherous journeys on land and water to tea parties with the governor; from tussles with snakes and scorpions to Scrabble with nuns; from struggling with illness to suddenly falling in love - this unique glimpse into contrasting sides of a lost colonial world is possible thanks to Wendy's detailed diaries, written by the light of an oil lamp in her bamboo and palm-leaf house.

Meanwhile, back home, churches throughout the UK are praying for the young woman in Borneo.

'A heart-warming adventure... a spellbinding narrative... a step into another world.' Mark Beaumont, adventurer, author and broadcaster

Going to Africa would cost April everything. She went anyway.

From a young age, April Holden was diagnosed with chronic health problems that restricted what she could and could not do. Growing up in St. Helens, Merseyside, April was a frail child who knew pain and resistance her whole life. But, at just seven years old, she came to faith and was convinced that God had called her to leave her home behind and move to Africa. When in university, she was finally old enough to apply to work with street children in Africa, but was turned down.

That didn't stop her.

Nothing would.

After training to become a teacher, April applied again to leave the UK behind, and serve God in Africa. This time she got a step closer to her calling; she was sent to Egypt for training. Soon after, her chance came. She transferred to one of the most tumultuous, war-torn regions of North Africa. There she set up homes for boys scarred by war, fleeing violence, seeking safety. There she God do the impossible and offer a beacon of hope in an area of conflict and fear. She also saw her own life thrust into danger as political shifts had turned many of the population against anyone who looked like her, like the American forces that were now invading.

After escapes that were too close for comfort, April returned to the UK.

But her work wasn't finished yet.

A remarkable story of one woman's complete faith in God, They Called Us Love is a moving and powerful real-life story of mission and ministry.

Aged eight, Thomas Graumann excitedly boarded a train in Prague, Czechoslovakia, to embark on what he believed was a three-month holiday. "Go to Britain, learn English, and when the Germans leave, you can come home again," his mother assured him. Thomas carried two suitcases and a bag of food. At the time he knew his country had been taken over by the Germans and now was under Nazi control.

That was the last he would see of his mother and most of his Jewish family, who died in concentration camps. He had also never heard of Nicholas Winton, the hero who saved 669 children (Thomas was one of the last, #652), transporting them from Czechoslovakia to the UK to save their lives. This was Thomas' first rescue, aboard what became known as the Kindertransport.

His second came a year later when an evangelist from the Scottish village he was taken to for safety shared the good news of Jesus Christ with him. Saying a prayer on bent knee, Thomas' soul was rescued, and he soon dedicated himself to missionary service, which he fulfilled as an adult in the Philippines, eventually moving to the U.S.

But his missionary zeal returned after the fall of Communism - and the return of his grandmother's property to his family. Both actions ushered in a way for him to return to the Czech Republic. The former rescued child was now free to travel throughout his homeland, speaking in schools of how he was rescued... not once, but twice.

Dangerously Alive tells the epic and adventurous biography of Simon Guillebaud and his 10 years of being a front-line evangelist in Burundi - one of the most dangerous countries on earth.

In 1999 Simon went to Burundi with a team of evangelistic, which he pulled together to reach the youths of the streets. Several colleagues died and God honoured their efforts. Hundreds found faith and miracles became almost a daily occurrence.

Simon tells us in the book how he did not expect to survive, however God had other plans. A lady that Simon met called Lizzie was willing to share his tough life: they now have three children.

During his time in Burundi Simon was determined to construct the best conference centre there, which was built without incurring debts or paying bribes.

Simon states -
'The book combines prayer letters, diary entries and reflections from ten years in a war zone, from very humble beginnings to a massively fruitful ministry. It covers witchcraft, miracles, evangelism, Islam, orphans, street kids, aids, business for mission, and stories of triumphant faith in the midst of hideous suffering. It includes dark times and disillusionments. It's real, vulnerable and raw.'

St Cuthbert, monk and bishop of Lindisfarne, was a man of extraordinary charm and ability. A preacher, teacher and pastor, he was also reputed to have gifts of prophecy and healing.

David Adam, one of the most prolific and best-loved writers in the Celtic tradition, vividly relates the story of this central figure in Celtic Christianity.

Drawing out the qualities which make Cuthbert so important in our own time, Fire of the North celebrates the saint's ready sense of God's presence and eager response to nature.

The narrative is complemented throughout by prayers specially composed to help us experience the direct force of Celtic spirituality for ourselves.

Long before the successful The Lord of the Rings films, J.R.R. Tolkien's creations, imagination, and characters had captured the attention of millions of readers. But who was the man who dreamt up the intricate languages and perfectly crafted world of Middle-earth.

Tolkien had a difficult life, for many years: orphaned and poor, his guardian forbad him to communicate with the woman he had fallen in love with, and he went through the horrors of the First World War.

An intensely private and brilliant scholar, he spent over fifty years working on the languages, history, peoples and geography of Middle-earth, with a consistent mythology and body of legends inspired by a formidable knowledge of early northern European history and culture. J.R.R. Tolkien became a legend by creating an imaginary world that has enthralled and delighted generations.

This delightful and accessible biography brings him to life. Colin Duriez has appeared as a commentator on DVDs of Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings, and BBC television's The Worlds of Fantasy. He is also the author of The Inklings Handbook (with the late David Porter), J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis: The Story of Their Friendship, and Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings, and has contributed to definitive reference works, The Tolkien Encyclopedia and a number of other tomes relating to Tolkien.

2017 marks the 200th anniversary of the death of Jane Austen, whose six completed novels have never been out of print.

Best known for her novels, 'Sense and Sensibility', 'Pride and Prejudice', 'Mansfield Park', and 'Emma', first published anonymously, Jane commented, critiqued and illuminated the life of the English upper classes. But did Jane's writings highlight anything about her own spirituality?

In this celebratory book, Paula Hollingsworth explores Jane Austen's gentle but strong faith and the effect it had both on her life and her writing. Drawing on Jane's life story, her letters, her friendships, her books and the characters portrayed, Paula shows the depth of Jane Austen's spirituality.

'Many assume that living with dementia is one long term steady decline. Jennifer's insightful book debunks that myth.' - Jeremy Hughes, Chief Executive, Alzheimer's Society

Jennifer Bute was a highly qualified senior doctor in a large clinical practice, whose patients included those with dementia. Then she began to notice symptoms in herself. She was finally given a diagnosis of Young Onset Dementia in 2009.

After resigning as a GP, she resolved to explore what could be done to slow the progress of dementia. The aim of this practical book is to help people who are living with dementia and to give hope to those who are with them on the dementia journey.

Jennifer believes that her dementia is an opportunity as well as a challenge. Her important insights are that the person 'inside' remains and can be reached, even when masked by the condition, and that
spirituality rises as cognition becomes limited.

'The observant physician shines through in Dr Bute's book, while her practical advice reveals the resourcefulness of an inventor. Alzheimer's disease has surely met one of its toughest ever adversaries!' - Peter Garrard, Professor of Neurology, University of London

'An enjoyably pacey read.' Times Literary Supplement

'Eloquent... brilliant and very moving.' Paul Cartledge, Emeritus Professor of Greek culture, University of Cambridge

'On the morning of 6 October 1536, a frail scholar was taken from a dungeon in the castle at Vilvoorde, just north of Brussels. Armed guards kept the crowds at bay as he was led through the streets of the small town. He was to be burned. The funeral pyre, a wigwam stack of planks surmounted by a cross, was ready. Gunpowder would be thrown on the wood to encourage the flames. He was allowed a few moments of prayer. As a priest, prayer had been the keystone of his faith. After the brief pause, he walked up the steps to be tied to the cross. As he waited for the flames, he called out, "Lord, open the King of England's eyes!'

'This was William Tyndale, the man whose translation of the New Testament and much of the Old Testament was to bring about more profound changes to the English-speaking world over the next five centuries than the works of any other man in its history.'
From Chapter 1: Innocence and genius

John Muir is regarded as the 'father of America's national parks' and is a towering figure in the history of that country's involvement with ecology.

Born into a harsh home in Dunbar, Scotland he would often escape to revel in the birds and wildlife of the area. When his father suddenly uprooted the family and moved to the United States, the oppression he associated with his childhood continued - and so did his involvement with the natural world.

Despite the difficulty of his formative years Muir grew up to be a man of great joy - first an inventor and then an explorer, he found his haven in the mountains of Sierra Nevada. He was a fascinating character: on the one hand a recluse, who sought solitude, and on the other a passionate activist, determined to save the places he loved.

A strong believer in both God and the essential goodness of humanity, he was the founder and first president of the Sierra Club. This wonderful memoir pays tribute to a giant of ecology and is essential reading for lovers of natural history.

David Livingstone has gone down in history as a fearless explorer and missionary, hacking his way through the forests of Africa to bring light to the people - and also to free them from slavery. But who was he, and what was he actually like?

"He was an extraordinary character," according to biographer Stephen Tomkins, spectacularly bad at personal relationships, at least with white people, possessed of infinite self-belief, courage, and restlessness. He was an almost total failure as a missionary, and so became an explorer and campaigner against the slave trade, hoping to save African lives and souls that way instead. He helped, however unwittingly, to set the tone and the extent of British involvement in Africa. He was a flawed but indomitable idealist.

Fascinating new evidence about Livingstone's life and his struggles have come to light in the letters and journals he left behind, now accessible to us for the first time through spectral imaging. These form a significant addition to the source material for this excellent biography, which provides an honest and balanced account of the real man behind the Victorian icon.

Eileen Mitson has collected thirteen authentic accounts of people whose lives have been utterly transformed by an encounter with Christ. As every Christian leader recognises, the simple step of becoming a Christian doesn't solve the problems.

Eileen Mitson has collected thirteen authentic, first-hand accounts of people whose lives have been utterly turned around by a deep encounter with Christ.

All have, at a crucial stage, worked through the Steps to Freedom in Christ, the Bible-based discipleship programme developed by Neil Anderson with Steve Goss. Steve provides a commentary to each story, bringing out key points.

Florence Nightingale is remembered in history for the part she played in nursing wounded soldiers during the Crimean War and is often credited as the founder of modern nursing.

In this brand new introduction, Lynn McDonald explores the social, political and religious factors that formed the original context of her life and writings such as her faith in a secular world, the Crimean War and the founding of a new profession, before considering how those factors affected the way she was initially received before turning to the intellectual and cultural 'afterlife' of Florence Nightingale.

Part One: The History (What do we know?) This brief historical introduction to Florence Nightingale explores the social, political and religious factors that formed the original context of her life and writings, and considers how those factors affected the way she was initially received. What was her impact on the world at the time and what were the key ideas and values connected with her?

Part Two: The Legacy (Why does it matter?) This second part explores the intellectual and cultural 'afterlife' of Florence Nightingale, and considers the ways in which her impact has lasted and been developed in different contexts by later generations. Why is she still considered important today? In what ways is her legacy contested or resisted? And what aspects of her legacy are likely to continue to influence the world in the future?

The book has a brief chronology at the front plus a list of further reading at the back.

Travelling in his early years with his artist father in the United States, France and England, Thomas Merton prided himself on his worldly accomplishments. His year at Clare College, Cambridge, was indulgent, and although Columbia University to which he went next suited his temperament better, it did nothing to assuage his restlessness.

Gradually Merton recognized his need for faith and became a Catholic. With his baptism he began entertaining thoughts of monasticism but his desire to enter the priesthood in a Franciscan monastery came to nothing, and he remained a lay teaching member of the order for some time. However, when he was twenty-seven he made a retreat to a Trappist monastery in Kentucky. This momentous experience convinced him that the silence of the Cistercian Order was what he craved.

The Seven Storey Mountain tells the story of Merton's search for faith and peace in a world which first fascinated and then appalled him. It is written with the profound insight of a man who has seen himself clearly.

'The Seven Storey Mountain is a book one reads with a pencil so as to make it one’s own.'
Graham Greene

'A remarkable book, a classic of its kind, written in a vivid, rich and alert style which ranges from crisp vernacular to passionate eloquence, full of picturesque incident and passing at times into religious ecstasy.'
The Times Literary Supplement

'A book which may well prove to be of permanent interest in the history of religious experience.'
Evelyn Waugh

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) was one of the most compelling theologians of the twentieth century. A complex mix of scholarship and passion, his life and writings continue to fascinate and challenge Christians worldwide.

He was a pastor and profound teacher and writer on Christian theology and ethics, yet was also involved in the resistance against Hitler which plotted his assassination. Bonhoeffer graduated from the University of Berlin and earned his doctorate in theology at the age of twenty-one. While pursuing postgraduate work at New York's Union Theological Seminary, his life and ministry were profoundly influenced by his unanticipated involvement with the African-American Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem during that time.

Protesting the unconstitutional interference by Hitler of the established national Protestant church and the persecution of the Jews, and rejecting the alignment of the German Christian movement with the Nazi regime, Bonhoeffer became head of an underground seminary for the resisting Confessing Church in Germany.

At the 2012 Wheaton Theology Conference, Bonhoeffer's thought and ministry were explored in stimulating presentations. Bonhoeffer's views of Jesus Christ, the Christian community, and the church's engagement with culture enjoyed special focus. Throughout it is clear that in the twenty-first century, Bonhoeffer's legacy is as provocative and powerful as ever.

When gynecologists Catherine and Reg Hamlin left their home in Australia for Ethiopia, they never dreamed that they would establish what has been heralded as one of the most incredible medical programs in the modern world.

But more than forty years later, the couple has operated on more than 20,000 women, most of whom suffered from obstetric fistula, a debilitating childbirth injury.

In this awe-inspiring book, Dr. Catherine Hamlin recalls her life and career in Ethiopia. Her unyielding courage and solid faith will astound Christians worldwide as she talks about the people she has grown to love and the hospital that so many Ethiopian women have come to depend on. She truly is the Mother Teresa of our age.

The second edition includes an afterword that brings Catherine's story up to date and new color photographs.

Set in Rome, Chicago, and Anchorage, and spanning thirty years from crime to confrontation, The Book of Timothy: The Devil, My Brother, and Me recounts in lyric movements a sister’s journey, partly through trickery, but eventually through truth, to gain a long-absent admission from the priest who abused her brother. While on that journey, Nockels Wilson, a former prosecutor, confronts not only the priest, but her personal quest for vengeance. She further seeks an understanding of how the first Book of Timothy, the work of St. Paul, contributed to the silencing of women in her once loved Catholic Church. This Book of Timothy promises to take the reader on a quest for justice and down a path of unexpected coincidences that ends where it first began: out of a great love for a brother and in the power of first memory.

Winner of Australia’s richest literary award, No Friend but the Mountains is Kurdish-Iranian journalist and refugee Behrouz Boochani’s account of his detainment on Australia’s notorious Manus Island prison. Composed entirely by text message, this work represents the harrowing experience of stateless and imprisoned refugees and migrants around the world.

In 2013, Kurdish-Iranian journalist Behrouz Boochani was illegally detained on Manus Island, a refugee detention centre off the coast of Australia. He has been there ever since. This book is the result. Laboriously tapped out on a mobile phone and translated from the Farsi.

It is a voice of witness, an act of survival. A lyric first-hand account. A cry of resistance. A vivid portrait of five years of incarceration and exile. Winner of the Victorian Prize for Literature, No Friend but the Mountains is an extraordinary account — one that is disturbingly representative of the experience of the many stateless and imprisoned refugees and migrants around the world.

“Our government jailed his body, but his soul remained that of a free man.” — From the Foreword by Man Booker Prize–winning author Richard Flanagan

An unforgettable first-person account of surviving the Rwandan genocide and its aftermath

Featuring a foreword by Globe and Mail Africa Bureau Chief Geoffrey York

In 1994, Obadiah was the thirteen-year-old son of a Hutu pastor, living comfortably in Rwanda and dreaming of becoming a pilot, when violence and bloodshed began to engulf the country. His family soon fled their home, pursued by soldiers and stalked by death and hunger. As the genocide led into a horrific war, Obadiah was forced to survive unrelenting terror and the darkest despair as a refugee, both in neighbouring Zaire and eventually in the American refugee detention system. Obadiah was sustained through these horrors by his faith and the philosophy of ubuntu — finding one’s self through connection with others.

In the spirit of Night by Elie Wiesel, Die Walking is one boy’s horrific story of shared humanity in a chaotic world.

Lucky Dog is a hilarious and heartwarming memoir by a renowned veterinary oncologist who tells us what we can learn about health care and ourselves from our most beloved pets.

What happens when a veterinary surgical oncologist (laymen’s term: cancer surgery doctor) thinks she has cancer herself? Enter Sarah Boston: a vet who suspects a suspicious growth in her neck is thyroid cancer. From the moment she uses her husband’s portable ultrasound machine to investigate her lump — he’s a vet, too — it’s clear this will not be your typical cancer memoir.

She takes us on a hysterical and thought-provoking journey through the human health care system from the perspective of an animal doctor. Weaving funny and poignant stories of dogs she’s treated along the way, this is an insightful memoir about what the human medical world can learn from the way we treat our canine counterparts. Lucky Dog teaches us to trust our instincts, be our own advocates, and laugh while we’re doing it.

Award-winning author Christina Myers navigates the uncharted territory of midlife in a time of rapid social, cultural, and environmental change.

Modern midlife is finding oneself halfway home but without any reliable maps for the route ahead. With wit and warmth, these personal essays move from a first bra to first hot flashes to consider the lessons we learn through media and culture––and from each other––about bodies, sexuality, fatphobia, gender roles, and what we should want in life. Christina Myers explores the ways that beauty standards and cultural expectations around femininity have shaped our identities and how we might shed those going forward; the power of friendships and the value of having other women to learn from; the anxiety of moving through motherhood into menopause in a time of global environmental crisis and political upheaval; and the uncertainty of how this stage of life should unfold, as old systems shift and crumble. Though our maps for midlife are never identical, we discover familiar paths and common landmarks in each other’s stories; these essays remind us there are others on this trail with us, just behind or just ahead, out of sight. We are not alone.

The definitive, authorized story of legendary sketch comedy troupe The Kids in the Hall —
who will soon be returning for a new original series on Amazon Prime Video.

Meticulously researched and written with the full cooperation and participation of the troupe, The Kids in the Hall: One Dumb Guy features exclusive interviews with Dave Foley, Bruce McCulloch, Kevin McDonald, Mark McKinney, and Scott Thompson, as well as key players from their inner circle, including producer Lorne Michaels, the “man in the towel” Paul Bellini, and head writer Norm Hiscock. Marvel as the Kids share their intimate memories and behind-the-scenes stories of how they created their greatest sketches and most beloved characters, from the Chicken Lady and Buddy Cole to Cabbage Head and Sir Simon &Hecubus.

The Kids in the Hall: One Dumb Guy spans the entirety of the Kids’ storied career, from their early club shows in Toronto and New York to their recent live reunion tours across North America. Along for the ride are a plethora of fans, peers, and luminaries to celebrate the career and legacy of Canada’s most subversively hilarious comedy troupe. You’ll read tributes from Seth Meyers, Judd Apatow, Garry Shandling, Paul Feig, Mike Myers, David Cross, Michael Ian Black, Brent Butt, Jonah Ray, Dana Gould, Bob Odenkirk, Andy Richter, and Canada’s newest comedy sensation, Baroness Von Sketch. As an added bonus, the book includes never-before-seen photographs and poster art from the personal archives of the Kids themselves.

Perfect for diehard fans and new initiates alike, The Kids in the Hall: One Dumb Guy will make you laugh and make you cry … and it may even crush your head.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Globe 100 Best Book of 2024!
The Hill Times 100 Best Book of 2024

In a deeply personal investigation, award-winning journalist Sadiya Ansari takes us across three continents and back a century as she seeks the truth behind a family secret. Why did her grandmother Tahira abandon her seven children to follow a man from Karachi to a tiny village in Punjab? And though she eventually left him, Tahira remained estranged from her children for nearly two decades. Who was she in those years when she was no longer a wife or mother? For Sadiya herself, uninterested in marriage and children, the question begets another: What space is available to women who defy cultural expectations? 

Through her inquiry, Sadiya discovers what her daadi's life was like during that separation and she confronts difficult historical truths: the pervasiveness of child marriage, how Partition made refugees of millions of families like hers, and how the national freedoms achieved in 1947 did not extend to women’s lives. She sees the threads of this history woven through each generation after, and finds an unexpected sense of belonging in a culture that, at first blush, shuns women for wanting lives of their own.

INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER

A poetic memoir as intricately woven as a dreamcatcher about overcoming the pain of generational trauma with the power of traditional healing

In candid, incisive, and delicate prose, Chyana Marie Sage shares the pain of growing up with her father, a crack dealer who went to prison for molesting her older sister. In revisiting her family’s history, Chyana examines the legacy of generational abuse, which began with her father’s father, who was forcibly removed from his family by the residential schools and Sixties Scoop programs. Yet hers is also a story of hope, as it was the traditions of her people that saved her life, healing one small piece in the mosaic that makes up the dark past of colonialism shared by Indigenous people throughout Turtle Island.

Winner, 2017 Shaughnessy Cohen Writers' Trust Prize for Political Writing
Winner, 2017 RBC Taylor Prize
Winner, 2017 First Nation Communities Read: Young Adult/Adult
Winner, 2024 Blue Metropolis First Peoples Prize, for the whole of her work
Finalist, 2017 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction

The groundbreaking and multiple award-winning national bestseller work about systemic racism, education, the failure of the policing and justice systems, and Indigenous rights by Tanya Talaga.

Over the span of eleven years, seven Indigenous high school students died in Thunder Bay, Ontario. They were hundreds of kilometres away from their families, forced to leave home because there was no adequate high school on their reserves. Five were found dead in the rivers surrounding Lake Superior, below a sacred Indigenous site. Using a sweeping narrative focusing on the lives of the students, award-winning author Tanya Talaga delves into the history of this northern city that has come to manifest Canada’s long struggle with human rights violations against Indigenous communities.

A moving portrait of a father and daughter relationship and a case for late-stage creativity from Emily Urquhart, the bestselling author of Beyond the Pale: Folklore, Family, and the Mystery of Our Hidden Genes.

“The fundamental misunderstanding of our time is that we belong to one age group or another. We all grow old. There is no us and them. There was only ever an us.” — from The Age of Creativity

It has long been thought that artistic output declines in old age. When Emily Urquhart and her family celebrated the eightieth birthday of her father, the illustrious painter Tony Urquhart, she found it remarkable that, although his pace had slowed, he was continuing his daily art practice of drawing, painting, and constructing large-scale sculptures, and was even innovating his style. Was he defying the odds, or is it possible that some assumptions about the elderly are flat-out wrong? After all, many well-known visual artists completed their best work in the last decade of their lives, Turner, Monet, and Cézanne among them. With the eye of a memoirist and the curiosity of a journalist, Urquhart began an investigation into late-stage creativity, asking: Is it possible that our best work is ahead of us? Is there an expiry date on creativity? Do we ever really know when we’ve done anything for the last time?

The Age of Creativity is a graceful, intimate blend of research on ageing and creativity, including on progressive senior-led organizations, such as a home for elderly theatre performers and a gallery in New York City that only represents artists over sixty, and her experiences living and travelling with her father. Emily Urquhart reveals how creative work, both amateur and professional, sustains people in the third act of their lives, and tells a new story about the possibilities of elder-hood.

In Breaking the Ocean, diversity and inclusion specialist Annahid Dashtgard addresses the long-term impacts of exile, immigration, and racism by offering a vulnerable, deeply personal account of her life and work.

Annahid Dashtgard was born into a supportive mixed-race family in 1970s Iran. Then came the 1979 Revolution, which ushered in a powerful and orthodox religious regime. Her family was forced to flee their homeland, immigrating to a small town in Alberta, Canada. As a young girl, Dashtgard was bullied, shunned, and ostracized both by her peers at school and adults in the community. Home offered little respite, with her parents embroiled in their own struggles, exposing the sharp contrasts between her British mother and Persian father.

Determined to break free from her past, Dashtgard created a new identity for herself as a driven young woman who found strength through political activism, eventually becoming a leader in the anti–corporate globalization movement of the late 1990s. But her unhealed trauma was re-activated following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Suffering burnout, Dashtgard checked out of her life and took the first steps towards personal healing, a journey that continues to this day.

Breaking the Ocean introduces a unique perspective on how racism and systemic discrimination result in emotional scarring and ongoing PTSD. It is a wake-up call to acknowledge our differences, addressing the universal questions of what it means to belong and ultimately what is required to create change in ourselves and in society.

Secret wartime letters, a volatile love triangle, an unmarked grave, a noble heritage—a revelatory mother-daughter memoir about discovery, love, and forgiveness.

Sorting through her late mother’s possessions, Halina St. James found a secret stash of letters. They told how her mother, Maria, was abducted as a teenager in Ukraine by Nazis and sent to Germany as a slave.

After the war, Maria found herself pregnant in a displaced persons camp. She married the father, an older man from a noble Polish family. But her life changed when her husband introduced his friend, a young Polish freedom fighter. In Canada, the younger man betrayed his friend and ran off with Maria and Halina.

The letters made Halina realize how little she knew of her mother or her heritage.

The Golden Daughter is the gripping story of a mother and daughter shaped by forces they had no control over.

After uncovering truths hidden for a century, Halina was finally able to make peace with her mother, her father—and herself.

Finalist, Writers Trust Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ2S+ Emerging Writers

I have just heard for the first time the expression “to make soup”: it means to mix the bottom-of-the-pocket drugs of everyone huddled in the club toilet stall, opened MD, ketamine, old dry speed, crushed e pills, to make big lines that will let us forget the past forty-eight hours that have been so difficult.

In Instagram-style vignettes that span Montreal, New York, and Berlin, our narrator — a doctoral student in medieval studies — leads us through the bathrooms and back rooms of clubs and raves as he explores the sex, drugs, and music that define queer nightlife.

Accompanied by Jacob Pyne’s full-colour illustrations, which perfectly punctuate the narrator’s occasional self-destructive melancholy, Scenes from the Underground delivers the fully uninhibited field notes of the club scene.

In an utterly unique approach to biography, On Love and Tyranny traces the life and work of the iconic German Jewish intellectual Hannah Arendt, whose political philosophy and understandings of evil, totalitarianism, love, and exile prove essential amid the rise of the refugee crisis and authoritarian regimes around the world.

What can we learn from the iconic political thinker Hannah Arendt? Well, the short answer may be: to love the world so much that we think change is possible.

The life of Hannah Arendt spans a crucial chapter in the history of the Western world, a period that witnessed the rise of the Nazi regime and the crises of the Cold War, a time when our ideas about humanity and its value, its guilt and responsibility, were formulated. Arendt’s thinking is intimately entwined with her life and the concrete experiences she drew from her encounters with evil, but also from love, exile, statelessness, and longing. This strikingly original work moves from political themes that wholly consume us today, such as the ways in which democracies can so easily become totalitarian states; to the deeply personal, in intimate recollections of Arendt’s famous lovers and friends, including Heidegger, Benjamin, de Beauvoir, and Sartre; and to wider moral deconstructions of what it means to be human and what it means to be humane.

On Love and Tyranny brings to life a Hannah Arendt for our days, a timeless intellectual whose investigations into the nature of evil and of love are eerily and urgently relevant half a century later.

Winner, 2024 Writers' Union of Canada Freedom to Read Award
Winner, 2023 Wilfrid Eggleston Award for Nonfiction
Finalist, 2023 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize

A wildfire of a debut memoir by internationally recognized French/Cree/Iroquois journalist Brandi Morin set to transform the narrative around Indigenous Peoples.
Brandi Morin is known for her clear-eyed and empathetic reporting on Indigenous oppression in North America. She is also a survivor of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls crisis and uses her experience to tell the stories of those who did not survive the rampant violence. From her time as a foster kid and runaway who fell victim to predatory men and an oppressive system to her career as an internationally acclaimed journalist, Our Voice of Fire chronicles Morin’s journey to overcome enormous adversity and find her purpose, and her power, through journalism. This compelling, honest book is full of self-compassion and the purifying fire of a pursuit for justice.

In this deeply moving and elegantly written book, Halfdan W. Freihow takes Gabriel, his young autistic son, on a journey through the full spectrum of human experience. With great love, profound tenderness, and gentle wit, Freihow captures Gabriel's triumphs and disappointments, his joy and frustration, while struggling to help him make sense of a world that he himself does not, and cannot, fully comprehend. A powerful, honest, and achingly beautiful narrative, Somewhere Over the Sea describes a complex, loving relationship that is sometimes fraught with misunderstanding, but always bolstered by unconditional love. A must-read for all parents.

When a stranger shoots his dad on a Costa Rican pier, Peter Counter hauls his blood-drenched father to safety. Returning home, Counter discovers that his sense of time and memory is shattered, and in its place is a budding new mental illness: post-traumatic stress disorder.

Counter begins to see violence everywhere. From the music of Cat Stevens to Jeb Bush’s Twitter feed. Walter Benjamin to Johnny Carson. Taskmaster. Video games. ASMR videos on YouTube. The world is steeped in gore. Again and again, Counter finds himself reliving his father’s shooting as his trauma is fragmented, recast, and distorted on a compulsive mental Tilt-A-Whirl.

Formally inventive and incisively smart, How to Restore a Timeline revels in a fragile human condition battered by real conflict and hyper-curated media portrayals of death. Channelling Phoebe Bridgers, George Orwell, and Jordan Peele, these essays look us dead in the eye and ask: What kind of life can we piece together amid all the carnage?

From renowned trans activist, Luna M. Ferguson, comes a work of memoir and critical analysis that embraces an inclusive understanding of sex and gender.

Me, Myself, They: Life Beyond the Binary chronicles Luna M. Ferguson’s extraordinary story of transformation to become a celebrated non-binary filmmaker, writer, and advocate for trans rights. Beginning with their birth and early childhood of gender creativity, Ferguson recounts the complex and often challenging evolution of their identity, including traumatizing experiences with gender conversion therapy, bullying, depression, sexual assault, and violence. Above all, Ferguson’s story is about survival, empathy, and self-acceptance. By combining personal reflections on what it feels like to never truly fit into prescribed roles of male and female, and using an informed analysis of the ongoing shifts in contemporary attitudes towards sex and gender, Ferguson calls for an inclusive understanding of diverse human identity and respect for trans, non-binary, and gender-nonconforming people. Through their honest and impassioned storytelling, we learn what it means to reclaim one’s identity and to live beyond the binary.

One of the inspirations for the smash hit Broadway musical Come From Away, Channel of Peace is an unforgettable memoir of the extraordinary kindness afforded to passengers whose flights were re-routed to Gander, Newfoundland, on September 11, 2001.

When Kevin Tuerff and his partner boarded their flight from France to New York City on September 11, 2001, they had no idea that a few hours later the world — and their lives — would change forever. After U.S. airspace closed following the terrorist attacks, Kevin, who had been experiencing doubts about organized religion, found himself in the small town of Gander, Newfoundland, with thousands of other refugees or “come from aways.”

Channel of Peace is a beautiful account of how the people of Gander rallied with boundless acts of generosity and compassion for the “plane people,” renewing Kevin’s spirituality and inspiring him to organize an annual and growing “giving back” day. His unforgettable and uplifting story, along with others, has reached thousands of people when it was incorporated into the Broadway musical Come From Away.

“The most important book to be written in more than 40 years about the rise of Canadian literature… Arrival: The Story of CanLit brims and crackles, in equal measure, with information and energy.” — Winnipeg Free Press

A Globe and Mail Top 100 Book
National Post 99 Best Books of the Year

In the mid-twentieth century, Canadian literature transformed from a largely ignored trickle of books into an enormous cultural phenomenon that produced Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, Michael Ondaatje, Mordecai Richler, and so many others. In Arrival, acclaimed writer and critic Nick Mount answers the question: What caused the CanLit Boom?

Written with wit and panache, Arrival tells the story of Canada’s literary awakening. Interwoven with Mount’s vivid tale are enlightening mini-biographies of the people who made it happen, from superstars Leonard Cohen and Marie-Claire Blais to lesser-known lights like the troubled and impassioned Harold Sonny Ladoo. The full range of Canada’s literary boom is here: the underground exploits of the blew ointment and Tish gangs; revolutionary critical forays by highbrow academics; the blunt-force trauma of our plain-spoken backwoods poetry; and the urgent political writing that erupted from the turmoil in Quebec.

Originally published to coincide with the 150th anniversary of Canadian Confederation, Arrival is a dazzling, variegated, and inspired piece of writing that helps explain how we got from there to here.

A writer’s witty and surprisingly optimistic account of learning to live with Parkinson’s disease. 

When he was sixty-five, François Gravel was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, upending the old age he had imagined for himself. As a way of contemplating his new life with a degenerative illness, he turned to what he knew best and loved most: writing. Gravel immersed himself in research on Parkinson’s, exploring its medical history and treatments and paying close attention to the changes he experienced, all in service of learning how to best manage his symptoms throughout the advancement of this incurable disease. 

With a lightness of touch that belies a difficult subject (he imagines Dr. Parkinson as a military man who has set up camp in his brain), Gravel shares what he has learned in a memoir that is at once charming, serious, and moving. He writes, “For a long time, I believed that Parkinson’s was a disease. Now, I realize it’s a philosophy course.” Colonel Parkinson in Charge is, in some ways, the companion text for this course, engaging with and demystifying a daunting subject to help readers better understand life with Parkinson’s disease.

A fresh look at a complex pope with a simple agenda: radically reforming the Catholic Church.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio is the consummate disruptor, disrupting archaic modes of church governance, disrupting our collective spiritual complacency in the face of new challenges to our human flourishing while at the same time remaining deeply faithful to the organic traditions of the church. He is the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, but beyond that he is a universal leader with commanding moral presence, able to connect with laypeople and with non-Christian faiths. Pope Francis is also a credible moral voice on issues of immigration, economic inequity, the devastating consequences of political populism, and the accelerating threats to the environment, in spite of the fact that he faces deep infrastructure and governance scandals in his organization.

In his determination to reform the Vatican and ensure the Catholic faith evolves in a way that is relevant to the 21st century, Francis is very much carrying on the tradition of the Jesuits, an order known for their work in education, humanitarian missions, and social justice. A deep understanding of the Jesuit order informs Michael W. Higgins’s approach in this novel reading of a papacy unlike any other.

From the bestselling author of Firewater comes a moving tribute to an older brother that traverses the thresholds of memoir, fiction, and fantasy and reimagines what could have been.

When Harold Johnson returns to his childhood home in a northern Indigenous community for his brother Clifford’s funeral, the first thing his eyes fall on is a chair. It stands on three legs, the fourth broken off and missing. So begins a journey through the past, a retrieval of recollections of his silent, powerful Swedish father; his formidable Cree mother; and his brother Clifford, a precocious young boy who is drawn to the mysterious workings of the universe. As the night unfolds, memories of Clifford surface in Harold’s mind’s eye. Memory, fiction, and fantasy collide, and Clifford comes to life as the scientist he was meant to be, culminating in his discovery of the Grand Unified Theory.

Exquisitely crafted, funny, visionary, and wholly moving, Clifford is an extraordinary work that embraces myriad forms of storytelling. To read it is to be immersed in a home, a family, a community, the wider world, the entire cosmos.

A courageous, moving, and powerful memoir from a renowned feminist activist, Heroes in My Head is the incredible untold story of Judy Rebick’s struggle with depression and Dissociative Identity Disorder.

In this riveting memoir, renowned feminist Judy Rebick tells the story of the eleven personalities she developed in order to help her cope with, and survive, childhood sexual abuse. In Heroes in My Head, Rebick chronicles her struggle with depression in the 1980s, when she became a high-profile spokesperson for the pro-choice movement during the fight to legalize abortion. It was in the 1990s, when she took on her biggest challenge as a public figure by becoming president of a major women’s rights association, that her memories began to surface and became too persistent to ignore.

Rebick reveals her moment of discovery: meeting the eleven personalities; uncovering her repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse; and then communicating with each personality in therapy and on the page in a journal — all of this while she is leading high-profile national struggles.

Heroes in My Head is a fascinating, heartbreaking, but ultimately empowering story. With courage and honesty, Rebick lays bare the public and private battles that have shaped her life.