Sistine Heresy
Sistine Heresy

Author: Justine Saracen

Publisher: Bold Strokes Books Inc

Published: 2009-02-01

Total Pages: 291

ISBN-13: 1602824428

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Eros, art, and gorgeous blasphemyÉ Adrianna Borgia, survivor of the Borgia court, presents Michelangelo with the greatest temptations of his life while struggling herself with soul-threatening desires and heresies. Her growing passion for the painter Raphaela Bramante mirrors the sculptorÕs damnable interest in a castrato in the Sistine choir and in the ideas of secular humanism. Claimed as the epitome of Christian inspiration, MichelangeloÕs ceiling is revealed as a coup of Eros upon religion, a gorgeous blasphemy and a paean to forbidden love in the very heart of the Church.

The Sistine Secrets
The Sistine Secrets

Author: Benjamin Blech

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2008-04-29

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 0061469041

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Five hundred years ago Michelangelo began work on a painting that became one of the most famous pieces of art in the world—the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Every year millions of people come to see Michelangelo's Sistine ceiling, which is the largest fresco painting on earth in the holiest of Christianity's chapels; yet there is not one single Christian image in this vast, magnificent artwork. The Sistine Secrets tells the fascinating story of how Michelangelo embedded messages of brotherhood, tolerance, and freethinking in his painting to encourage "fellow travelers" to challenge the repressive Roman Catholic Church of his time. "Driven by the truths he had come to recognize during his years of study in private nontraditional schooling in Florence, truths rooted in his involvement with Judaic texts as well as Kabbalistic training that conflicted with approved Christian doctrine, Michelangelo needed to find a way to let viewers discern what he truly believed. He could not allow the Church to forever silence his soul. And what the Church would not permit him to communicate openly, he ingeniously found a way to convey to those diligent enough to learn his secret language."—from the Preface Blech and Doliner reveal what Michelangelo meant in the angelic representations that brilliantly mocked his papal patron, how he managed to sneak unorthodox heresies into his ostensibly pious portrayals, and how he was able to fulfill his lifelong ambition to bridge the wisdom of science with the strictures of faith. The Sistine Secrets unearths secrets that have remained hidden in plain sight for centuries.

Beloved Gomorrah
Beloved Gomorrah

Author: Justine Saracen

Publisher: Bold Strokes Books Inc

Published: 2013-03-01

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 1602829012

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What if Sodom and Gomorrah, those synonyms for debauchery, were in fact perfect societies? What if the avenging angels were genocidal terrorists, and the Òone righteous manÓ who escaped the annihilation was a murderous fanatic and the rapist of his own daughters? Justice is a long time coming, but finally the serene waters of the Red Sea give up the secret of a millennia-old lie. While surrendering to biblical wantonness with a film actress, sculptor Joanna Boleyn, discovers that righteousness can conceal its own depravity, that art tells more truth than scripture, and that challenging authority can be mortally dangerous.

Heretics and Heroes
Heretics and Heroes

Author: Thomas Cahill

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2014-08-12

Total Pages: 410

ISBN-13: 0385495587

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The New York Times bestselling author of How the Irish Saved Civilization reveals how the innovations of the Renaissance and the Reformation changed the Western world. • “Cahill is our king of popular historians.” —The Dallas Morning News This was an age in which whole continents and peoples were discovered. It was an era of sublime artistic and scientific adventure, but also of newly powerful princes and armies—and of unprecedented courage, as thousands refused to bow their heads to the religious pieties of the past. In these exquisitely written and lavishly illustrated pages, Cahill illuminates, as no one else can, the great gift-givers who shaped our history—those who left us a world more varied and complex, more awesome and delightful, more beautiful and strong than the one they had found.

The 100th Generation
The 100th Generation

Author: Justine Saracen

Publisher: Bold Strokes Books Inc

Published: 2006-07-01

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 1602824606

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Ancient curses, modern day villains, and a most intriguing woman who keeps appearing when least expected and thenÉdisappearing. Archeologist Valerie Foret has spent a year searching for a tomb in the Egyptian desertÑa labor broken only by high risk trysts with a powerful manÕs wife. When she finally makes the discovery of a lifetime, she is set upon by jealous rivals and religious fanatics. Worse, she is drawn into the depths of the desert by forces that offer knowledge of vast mysteries and at the same time threaten to destroy everything she knows. For what sheÕs found is a glimpse into the hereafter, and itÕs nothing like itÕs supposed to be. Brilliant scientist that she is, she has loved most unwisely and learned what she does not want to know. Follow her adventures through modern and ancient Egypt, through this world and the next, with Book One of the Ibis Prophecy.

To Sleep With Reindeer
To Sleep With Reindeer

Author: Justine Saracen

Publisher: Bold Strokes Books Inc

Published: 2020-10-13

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 1635557364

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Scientists have sounded alarms about the demise of Earth’s oceans for decades, and now the extinction event is here. As the world braces for disaster, paleobotanist Dr. Elle Graham finds a possible cure. Unfortunately, it’s been extinct for over one hundred thousand years. Captain Jackson Drake lives in the past because she can’t stand to face the present after the woman she loved sacrificed herself to save others, a casualty of a world ravaged by superbugs. The last person Jackson wants to travel back in time with is another woman trying to save the world at the cost of her own life. When things go sideways on primeval Earth, Jackson and Elle must put aside conflicts and work together to save the mission. Faith in each other just might give them the strength to save the world and rescue a broken heart in the process. But can Elle convince Jackson that the future is worth saving?

The Witch of Stalingrad
The Witch of Stalingrad

Author: Justine Saracen

Publisher: Bold Strokes Books Inc

Published: 2015-03-16

Total Pages: 363

ISBN-13: 1626393745

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As the German Blitzkrieg brings the Soviet Union to its knees in 1942, a regiment of women aviators flies out at night in flimsy aircraft without parachutes or radios to harass the Wehrmacht troops. The Germans call them “Night Witches” and the best of them is Lilya Drachenko. From the other end of the world, photojournalist Alex Preston arrives to “get the story” for the American press and witnesses sacrifice, hardship, and desperate courage among the Soviet women that is foreign to her. So also are their politics. While the conservative journalist and the communist Lilya clash politically, Stalingrad, the most savage battle of the 20th century, brings them together, until enemy capture and the lethal Russian winter tears them apart again.

Christian Heresy, James Joyce, and the Modernist Literary Imagination
Christian Heresy, James Joyce, and the Modernist Literary Imagination

Author: Gregory Erickson

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2022-02-10

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1350212768

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Organized by heretical movements and texts from the Gnostic Gospels to The Book of Mormon, this book uses the work of James Joyce – particularly Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake – as a prism to explore how the history of Christian heresy remains part of how we read, write, and think about books today. Erickson argues that the study of classical, medieval, and modern debates over heresy and orthodoxy provide new ways of understanding modernist literature and literary theory. Using Joyce's works as a springboard to explore different perspectives and intersections of 20th century literature and the modern literary and religious imagination, this book gives us new insights into how our modern and “secular” reading practices unintentionally reflect how we understand our religious histories.

Dian's Ghost
Dian's Ghost

Author: Justine Saracen

Publisher: Bold Strokes Books Inc

Published: 2016-03-15

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 1626395950

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Dana Norland shoots two men in cold blood and flees the US for the mountains of Rwanda. Posing as a biologist, she finds herself caring for gorillas with Kristen, Dian Fossey’s successor at the Karisoke research center. She has plenty of time to think about what she’s done, but can she find peace? Apparently not, for the mountain is haunted both by the ghost of Dian Fossey, and by the men who murdered her. Personal vendetta joins with genocide, and to flee the marauding butchers, the women hide in the rainforest. Among the mountain gorillas they once protected, they learn what justice is. And what it is not.

The Sniper’s Kiss
The Sniper’s Kiss

Author: Justine Saracen

Publisher: Bold Strokes Books Inc

Published: 2017-02-14

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 1626398402

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It is 1944, and vast armies drive each other back and forth over blood-drenched Europe. In the midst of it, two radically different women meet, one a Russian speaking American on a failed diplomatic mission and the other a Soviet sniper. The American, fleeing a sordid past worthy of Dostoyevsky, has murder in her heart but has injured no man. The other, a once-saintly believer, has killed a hundred of them for Stalin. Their politics are worlds apart, but a reckless drunken kiss has tied them together, through church and trench, incense and the smoke of battle. If they survive the war, can they survive the peace?