The Master House, close to the Welsh border, is medieval and slowly falling into ruin. Now the house and its surrounding land have been sold to the Duchy of Cornwall, but the Duchy's plans to renovate the house and its outbuildings are frustrated when the specialist builder refuses to work there.
December, and the river is rising. The village of Ledwardine has never been flooded in living memory. Within days it will be an island. There's no electricity. The church is serving as a temporary mortuary for two people who drowned. Only one man feels safer. An aggressively atheist author has been moved, for his own safety, Rushdie-style, into a secluded house just outside the village. Fundamentalist Christians have hated him for years. Now he's offended the Muslims. Bad move. Meanwhile, archaeologists, assisted by Merrily's teenage daughter, Jane, are at work in Coleman's Meadow, unearthing an ancient row of standing stones which some people would rather stay buried. The atheist's temporary home is close to the site. And his young wife is becoming conspicuously agitated. Is it the fear of discovery--or the kind of fear that she, of all people, could never disclose? One thing is clear: the last person who's going to be welcome in that house is an exorcist. With the flood water washing up Church Lane towards the vicarage and the shop running out of cigarettes it looks like a cold and complex Christmas for Merrily Watkins in an ancient community forced to untangle its own history against the swirling uncertainty of the future.
Merrily is called to investigate a possible ghost sighting in her seventh fascinating adventure In the affluent, historic town of Ludlow, a teenage boy dies in a fall from the castle ruins. Accident or suicide? No great mystery—so why does the boy's uncle, retired detective Andy Mumford, turn to diocesan exorcist Merrily Watkins? More people will die before Merrily, her own future uncertain, uncovers a dangerous obsession with suicide, death, and the afterlife hidden within these shadowed medieval streets.
Merrily Watkins, parish priest, single mother, and exorcist, works for the Diocese of Hereford in a remote village on the border of England and Wales. Cozy? Not in the least. The elite warriors of the Hereford-based SAS know all about pain and the enduring of it. Syd Spicer, ex-SAS trooper, has found himself back in the Regiment, this time as its chaplain, responsible for the spiritual welfare of the hardest men in or out of uniform. Faced with a case which would normally be passed discreetly to Hereford diocesan exorcist Merrily Watkins, Spicer is forced, for security reasons, to try and handle it himself, and is coming close to a breakdown. Meanwhile, the scattered communities along the Welsh border have their own crisis. With recession biting deep, urban crime has spilled into the countryside and old barbaric evils are revived. When a wealthy landowner is hacked to death in his own farmyard, the senior investigating officer DI Frannie Bliss is caught in the backlash, his private life in danger of exposure. With the framework of her own world beginning to crack, Merrily is persuaded to venture into areas where neither a priest nor a woman is welcome to unearth secrets linked with the border's pagan past—secrets which she knows can never be disclosed.
In Speaking of Sin, Barbara Brown Taylor brings her fresh perspective to words that often cause us discomfort and have widely fallen into neglect: sin, damnation, repentance, penance, and salvation. In recovering this lost language in our worship and individual lives, she shows how we can take part in the divine work of redemption.
From Paleolithic flax to 3D knitting, explore the global history of textiles and the world they weave together in this enthralling and educational guide. The story of humanity is the story of textiles -- as old as civilization itself. Since the first thread was spun, the need for textiles has driven technology, business, politics, and culture. In The Fabric of Civilization, Virginia Postrel synthesizes groundbreaking research from archaeology, economics, and science to reveal a surprising history. From Minoans exporting wool colored with precious purple dye to Egypt, to Romans arrayed in costly Chinese silk, the cloth trade paved the crossroads of the ancient world. Textiles funded the Renaissance and the Mughal Empire; they gave us banks and bookkeeping, Michelangelo's David and the Taj Mahal. The cloth business spread the alphabet and arithmetic, propelled chemical research, and taught people to think in binary code. Assiduously researched and deftly narrated, The Fabric of Civilization tells the story of the world's most influential commodity.
With gossip being so prevalent in our culture, it can be hard to resist listening to and sharing stories about other people's business. But what does God say about gossip? In Resisting Gossip, Pastor Matt Mitchell not only outlines the scriptural warnings against gossip, but also demonstrates how the truth of the gospel can deliver believers from this temptation.
What is sin? Is it simply wrongdoing? Why do its effects linger over time? In this sensitive, imaginative, and original work, Gary Anderson shows how changing conceptions of sin and forgiveness lay at the very heart of the biblical tradition. Spanning nearly two thousand years, the book brilliantly demonstrates how sin, once conceived of as a physical burden, becomes, over time, eclipsed by economic metaphors. Transformed from a weight that an individual carried, sin becomes a debt that must be repaid in order to be redeemed in God's eyes. Anderson shows how this ancient Jewish revolution in thought shaped the way the Christian church understood the death and resurrection of Jesus and eventually led to the development of various penitential disciplines, deeds of charity, and even papal indulgences. In so doing it reveals how these changing notions of sin provided a spur for the Protestant Reformation. Broad in scope while still exceptionally attentive to detail, this ambitious and profound book unveils one of the most seismic shifts that occurred in religious belief and practice, deepening our understanding of one of the most fundamental aspects of human experience.
From award-winning author Tami Hoag comes a warm, moving story of two cultures in conflict and two hearts in love. Matt Thorne had come to his sister's rural inn to recover from an injury far from the city and his fast-paced life as an emergency room physician. Drifting between sleep and waking, Matt didn't trust his eyes when he saw the young woman who sat at his bedside in her plain cotton dress and apron, her chestnut hair tucked demurely beneath a white bonnet, like a beautiful vision from the past century. Sarah Troyer had been warned about the womanizing Dr. Throne, but nothing prepared her for the shiver of desire that shook her to her core when she gazed at him. Though her life was bound by the simple Amish way, Sarah had always longed for the world outside. Her job at the inn already branded her as a rebel in her community, and falling in love with a stranger would mean the loss of her family and the only life she knew. Yet something sparked within her with every touch of his hand, each glance from his dark eyes. Sarah was willing to allow herself a brief, secret adventure in the arms of a forbidden man. But she hadn't counted on Matt's passionate love—a love that would not let go, a love that could cost them both everything they knew....
Pride, lust, gluttony, greed, envy, sloth, and anger. They’re considered “deadly” because of their capacity to generate other evils. The truth is, we all sin and we do it all the time—in fact, usually several times over before breakfast! But human behavior, argues social psychologist Simon Laham, is more complex than “good” or “evil.” In psychology, these sins aren’t considered morally wrong or even uniformly bad, but are treated rather as complex and interesting psychological states that if, indulged wisely, can be functional, adaptive, and lead to a range of positive effects. The Science of Sin takes on these so-called sins one by one and through psychological research shows that being bad can be oh-so-good for you. Did you know that: · Being slow and lazy can help you win the race? · Anger makes you more open-minded? · Coveting what others have not only makes you more creative but bolsters self- esteem? So go ahead, eat that last cookie and kick back on the couch for a day of TV with your neighbor’s boyfriend—from gluttony to greed, envy to lust, Laham shows how even the deadliest, most decadent of vices can make you smart, successful, and happy.