We’ve added three novels to the Featured Titles list for October, two classics and one pre-release sneak peek.
Ceremony of Innocence
by Dorothy Cummings McLean
This book’s official release date isn’t until the 13th, but, pssst, it’s available now!
Not only is this contemporary fiction, it’s compelling Catholic contemporary fiction—and McLean’s fiction debut as well. There are blurbs aplenty on the novel page from literary names like Piers Paul Read and Fiorella de Maria, but one of the best came in an email from our own John Herreid: “For the first time in about a year, I missed my train stop yesterday—not due to falling asleep, as happened previously, but because I started re-reading her book. You should check it out.”
From the jacket copy:
Riots. Terrorist attacks. Neo-Nazi violence.
In modern-day Germany, journalist Catriona McClelland has seen it all while covering the contemporary European scene for a Catholic news organization. Keeping herself above the political fray in her professional life, she has also managed to keep herself from personal entanglements—still hurt from the wounds of a broken relationship. Things come to a head when her boyfriend Dennis, frustrated with a lack of commitment, leaves her for Suzy Davis, an idealistic young Canadian who is involved with a left-wing protest movement. But when Suzy is murdered… who is complicit and who is innocent?
Frankenstein
by Mary Shelley
No matter what Wal-Mart, Target, and Cracker Barrel think, it’s not even close to Christmas yet. First we have to get past Halloween, and a great way to prepare is reading this seminal tale of fright and the mayhem caused by trying to play God.
This volume from Ignatius Critical Editions seeks to salvage from the work its core insight, noting, “Seldom has a work of fiction suffered so scandalously from the slings and arrows of outrageous criticism. ”
Read more or order online. Then, when all the pint-sized monsters pound on your door later this month, you’ll be able to commend them on representing the unforeseen consequences of mankind’s effort to abandon the soul and master the universe. (Dracula flavor also available, and highly recommended.)
Dear and Glorious Physician
A Novel about St. Luke
by Taylor Caldwell
If you’d rather settle into Fall with some historical fiction, read Taylor Caldwell’s heavily researched and thoroughly imagined life of St. Luke. (St. Luke is a fitting anti-Victor Frankenstein, to boot.) From the jacket:
The world-famous novel about the triumphant story of St. Luke. Man of science, and Gospel writer.
Today St. Luke is known as the author of the third Gospel of the New Testament, but two thousand years ago he was Lucanus, a Greek, a man who loved, knew the emptiness of bereavement, and later traveled through the hills and wastes of Judea asking, “What manner of man was my Lord?”
It’s a long read you can get lost in, to which the novel’s many Goodreads reviews attest. Read more about the book, or buy the softcover online.
Leave a Reply