New Fiction
Epiphany by Paul Harrington
Paperback: 356 pages Publisher: BookSurge Publishing; 1st edition (December 10, 2009) ISBN-10: 1439264880 ISBN-13: 978-1439264881 reviewed by Jody Rakis Epiphany is the story of three wise men, but not like you … [Read More...]
A Recent Martyr by Valerie Martin
Paperback: 216 pages Publisher: Louisiana State University Press (October 2001) ISBN-10: 0807127418 ISBN-13: 978-0807127414 reviewed by Kathleen Valentine Sad, beautiful, and disturbing....< Emma is obsessed … [Read More...]
Prince of Peace by James Carroll
Paperback: 544 pages Publisher: Mariner Books ISBN-10: 039592619X ISBN-13: 978-0395926192 reviewed by Kathleen Valentine [Author's Warning: this review contains spoilers but I don't know how to express my reaction … [Read More...]
The Road to Jerusalem by Jan Guillou
Paperback: 448 pages Publisher: Harper Paperbacks; Reprint edition (April 13, 2010) ISBN-10: 0061688541 ISBN-13: 978-0061688546 reviewed by Steve Weatherbe I am just starting on The Templar Knight, which is … [Read More...]
Angel Time by Anne Rice
Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: Knopf ISBN-10: 1400043530 ISBN-13: 978-1400043538 reviewed by Kathleen Valentine Anne Rice has long been known as a writer of gothic tales populated with vampires, witches, devils … [Read More...]
Classic Fiction
The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
reviewed by Rachel Murphy It is in a night in 1946, a black wet January night that our narrator, Maurice Bendrix—whose very name implies something bent, slanted—wants to draw his reader to in order to begin his tale, … [Read More...]
The Curse of the Darkling Mill by Otfried Preussler
Paperback: 240 pages Publisher: Gryphon House (September 28, 2000) ISBN-10: 0863153291 ISBN-13: 978-0863153297 reviewed by Roy Peachey First published in German as Krabat, then translated into English as The Satanic … [Read More...]
The Ministry of Fear by Graham Greene
Paperback: 224 pages Publisher: Penguin Classics (April 26, 2005) ISBN-10: 0143039113 ISBN-13: 978-0143039112 reviewed by Roy Peachey If you're after brilliant writing and an exciting plot and don't mind dodgy … [Read More...]
Son of Dust by H.F.M. Prescott
Paperback: 436 pages Publisher: Loyola Press (January 1, 2007) ISBN-10: 0829423524 ISBN-13: 978-0829423525 reviewed by Debra Murphy Originally published in 1956 by MacMillan, Son of Dust by Anglo-Catholic novelist … [Read More...]
Mariette in Ecstasy by Ron Hansen
Paperback: 192 pages Publisher: Harper ISBN-10: 0060981180 reviewed by Kathleen Valentine This is quite possibly the most beautiful book I have ever read. The writing is lyrical and precise. Some chapters—divided … [Read More...]
Bios, Lit Crit & Writing
“In Their Own Words”: BBC video interviews with famous British novelists
Anyone interested in either modern British fiction or modern British Catholic fiction should take some time to browse the BBC's lovely little online gallery of video interviews with some of the top British novelists of recent decades. This list includes (click on the links) Catholic … [Read More...]
David Lodge on Muriel Spark
by Debra Murphy While I enjoy reading literary criticism of a variety of stripes, nothing beats lit crit written by one terrific writer in appreciation of the work of another terrific writer. I always want to leap up and leg it to my Macbook to scan the digisphere for sackfuls … [Read More...]
Nicholas Shakespeare on the “Voice” of Graham Greene
The summer 2010 issue of Intelligent Life magazine has a wonderful article (part of its "Notes on a Voice" series) by Nicholas Shakespeare on the literary "voice" of Catholic novelist Graham Greene. If you are a writer especially, this piece is must reading, and I confess I took a … [Read More...]
Catholic Thriller Writer uses Supernatural as a Probe (part two)
By Steve Weatherbe Meeting Catholicism through Thomas Merton Raised in a secular Jewish home in Brooklyn, he followed the plan to Columbia University, where he first encountered Catholicism in the still vibrant memory of Thomas Merton. Merton had edited a literary magazine … [Read More...]
Catholic Thriller Writer Uses Supernatural as a Probe (part one)
By Steve Weatherbe (This article also appeared in the National Catholic Register) When thriller writer Michael Gruber had his first religious experience, he was in the middle of a personal crisis that produced symptoms of self-destructiveness, hypochondria and agoraphobia, especially … [Read More...]
Catholic Writers Conference LIVE in PA, Aug. 4-6
PRESS RELEASE: Valley Forge, PA--The second annual Catholic Writers’ Conference LIVE will be held August 4-6, 2010, at the Scanticon Hotel Valley Forge in King of Prussia, PA. Sponsored by the Catholic Writer’s Guild and the Catholic Marketing Network (CMN), and held in conjunction … [Read More...]
Christianity is a Murder Mystery
by Steve Weatherbe [This article was first published in the Canadian Anglican Journal. —Editor] MURDER mysteries start at the end of the story—with a murder. And so, says Wilfrid Laurier University professor Peter Erb, does Christianity. He believes it is no accident that … [Read More...]
Piers Paul Read: A Life in Books
Nicbolas Wroe has a wonderful article in The Guardian UK about prolific Catholic writer and novelist Piers Paul Read. Read's latest novel, The Misogynist, will be published this month by Bloomsbury. Besides giving a nice little biographical sketch of Read, Wroe also writes at some … [Read More...]
Ann Begley on Muriel Spark in America magazine
The most recent edition of America magazine includes an article by Ann Begley on the life and work of Catholic novelist Muriel Spark. The article is largely inspired by a newly published biography of Spark, "seventeen years in the making", by Martin Stannard. Here's an excerpt … [Read More...]
The Keys of Middle Earth: Discovering Medieval Literature through the Fiction of J.R.R. Tolkien
by Stuart D. Lee and Elizabeth Solopova Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (February 16, 2006) ISBN-10: 140394671X ISBN-13: 978-1403946713 reviewed by Roy Peachey Writing in response to John Henry Newman's comment in The Idea of a University that "English Literature will … [Read More...]
Marilynne Robinson’s Critique of the “New Orthodoxy”
Marilynne Robinson, Christian novelist and author of the beautiful (and Pulitzer Prize-winning) novel Gilead has come out with a new book, non-fiction this time, entitled Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self. In it, according to this article … [Read More...]
“Walker Percy’s Weirdest Book”
The Chronicle of Higher Education's Percolator blog has an entertaining post by Tom Bartlett on Catholic novelist Walker Percy's Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book. According to Bartlett, Either Lost in the Cosmos is profound or it's the book equivalent of somebody encouraging … [Read More...]
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