About two thousand years ago, a great man who was renowned for forgiveness and magnanimity was betrayed and slain by his compatriots who feared he would become their King. To the chagrin of his murderers, he was soon hailed as a God and the momentous events that ensued paved the way for the birth of Christianity. The venue for this drama, however, was not Jerusalem as might be supposed, but rather the eternal city of Rome. It is a description of the founder of the Roman Empire. In a work stranger than fiction, Gary Courtney propounds that the Jesus of Nazareth that graces the pages of the New Testament is an entirely mythological personage, and presents a step by step explanation of how the beloved Saviour of the Christian religion entered the world from the wings of a stage.

In this world of illness and isolation, distancing and death, making sense of suffering has never been of more critical importance. Jesus in Isolation invites us to Bethany to witness the illness of Jesus’s best friend, the spiritual isolation of both Jesus and Lazarus’s sisters (Martha and Mary), and Lazarus’s cruel and untimely death from an unseen illness, as well as Jesus’s unexplained absence as he distanced from his friends and missed the funeral. Yet upon his late arrival, Jesus announced the glory of God had been revealed in the midst of the isolation, the distancing, and even death. He does this by proclaiming himself as “Resurrection and Life” and by absorbing into himself all the suffering and grief of his friends. Join Jesus, Lazarus, and his sisters on a journey through the great issues of our time as they encounter devastating illness, unanswered prayer, the abandonment of God, senseless suffering, cruel death, spiritual isolation, and deep disappointment. But notice when Jesus does arrive on the scene as “Resurrection and Life,” the world as God intended is made available to each of them—and also to us.

Bittersweet Jesus in the First Person turns the basic premise of Christ's life on its head. Yahweh is in trouble; Christ is his instrument and man his salvation. Extrapolated from Answer to Job by Carl Jung, Bittersweet Jesus in the First Person is fictionalized version of the life of Christ. It addresses his missing years while making Mary a God, Judas a saint, Moses a visionary, Allah and Romulus contemporaries and the Jews heroic. Through the story's characters it weaves pagan, Christian, Islamic, Greek, Chinese and Hindu influences into Christ's experiences. The book, written in dialogue, reveals Christ's life through counseling sessions between the ex-priest counselor and his messianic patient. The shallowness of indoctrination, the dubious rationale behind skepticism and the fundamental premise of Christian thought are viewed through the prism of this ostensibly, psychologically handicapped man.

A psychologist who evaluates the fitness of parents when their children have been removed from their custody finds herself reassessing her own mothering when her son falls victim to the opioid crisis. Psychologist and expert witness Dr. Sharon Lamb evaluates parents, particularly in high-stakes cases concerning the termination of parental rights. The conclusions she reaches can mean that some children are returned home from foster homes. Others are freed for adoption. Well-trained, Lamb generally can decide what’s in the best interests of the child. But when her son’s struggle with opioid addiction comes to light, she starts to doubt her right to make judgments about other mothers. As an expert, a professor, and a mother, Lamb gives voice to the near impossible standards demanded by a society prone to blame mothers when anything befalls their children. She describes vividly the plight of individual parents, mothers in particular, struggling with addiction and mental illness and trying to make stable homes for their kids amid the economic and emotional turmoil of their lives—all in the context of the opioid epidemic that has ravaged her home state of Vermont. In her office, during visits with their children, and in the family court, the parents we meet wait anxiously for Lamb’s verdict: Have they turned their lives around under child welfare’s watchful eye? Do they understand their children’s needs? In short, are they good enough? But what is good enough? Lamb turns that question on herself in the midst of her gradual realization of her son’s opioid addiction. Amazed at her own denial, feeling powerless to help him, Lamb confronts the heartache she can bring into the lives of others and her power to tear families apart.