In the tradition of Arianna Franklin and C. J. Sansom comes Samuel Thomas's remarkable debut, The Midwife's Tale It is 1644, and Parliament's armies have risen against the King and laid siege to the city of York. Even as the city suffers at the rebels' hands, midwife Bridget Hodgson becomes embroiled in a different sort of rebellion. One of Bridget's friends, Esther Cooper, has been convicted of murdering her husband and sentenced to be burnt alive. Convinced that her friend is innocent, Bridget sets out to find the real killer. Bridget joins forces with Martha Hawkins, a servant who's far more skilled with a knife than any respectable woman ought to be. To save Esther from the stake, they must dodge rebel artillery, confront a murderous figure from Martha's past, and capture a brutal killer who will stop at nothing to cover his tracks. The investigation takes Bridget and Martha from the homes of the city's most powerful families to the alleyways of its poorest neighborhoods. As they delve into the life of Esther's murdered husband, they discover that his ostentatious Puritanism hid a deeply sinister secret life, and that far too often tyranny and treason go hand in hand.

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • Drawing on the diaries of one woman in eighteenth-century Maine, "A truly talented historian unravels the fascinating life of a community that is so foreign, and yet so similar to our own" (The New York Times Book Review). Between 1785 and 1812 a midwife and healer named Martha Ballard kept a diary that recorded her arduous work (in 27 years she attended 816 births) as well as her domestic life in Hallowell, Maine. On the basis of that diary, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich gives us an intimate and densely imagined portrait, not only of the industrious and reticent Martha Ballard but of her society. At once lively and impeccably scholarly, A Midwife's Tale is a triumph of history on a human scale.

Two thousand years ago in Bethlehem, midwife Rachel and her husband Obadiah are awakened in the middle of the night by a knock on their door. Although she has been summoned many times before, this delivery would forever change her life. Using the midwifery skills passed down for hundreds of years from the midwife of Tamar, the midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, and others before her, Rachel is challenged to deliver this child in an unusual location. Later she learns from a group of shepherds that this child she has delivered is rumored to be the promised savior. Finally when threatened by those looking for the baby she is forced to make a life-altering decision. The Bethlehem Midwife shares the tale of the birth of Jesus through the eyes of a seasoned midwife as she risks everything in an attempt to keep the baby Jesus safe.

With Sandra Dallas's incomparable gift for creating a sense of time and place and characters that capture your heart, The Last Midwife tells the story of family, community, and the secrets that can destroy and unite them. It is 1880 and Gracy Brookens is the only midwife in a small Colorado mining town where she has delivered hundreds, maybe thousands, of babies in her lifetime. The women of Swandyke trust and depend on Gracy, and most couldn't imagine getting through pregnancy and labor without her by their sides. But everything changes when a baby is found dead...and the evidence points to Gracy as the murderer. She didn't commit the crime, but clearing her name isn't so easy when her innocence is not quite as simple, either. She knows things, and that's dangerous. Invited into her neighbors' homes during their most intimate and vulnerable times, she can't help what she sees and hears. A woman sometimes says things in the birthing bed, when life and death seem suspended within the same moment. Gracy has always tucked those revelations away, even the confessions that have cast shadows on her heart. With her friends taking sides and a trial looming, Gracy must decide whether it's worth risking everything to prove her innocence. And she knows that her years of discretion may simply demand too high a price now...especially since she's been keeping more than a few dark secrets of her own.

A beautiful telling of the Christmas nativity story through the eyes of the women who may have come to help Mary give birth to Jesus.

Still your busy heart with The Midwife's Story: Meditations for Advent Times. In this season of waiting, it is easy to get caught up in the tension and the stress. There is great value in taking quiet time for reflection. The Midwife's Story will allow you to ready yourself spiritually for the birth of the Divine. As the title suggests it is a poem about a very special midwife who may have been present at the birth of Christ. The poem, which reminds us that holiness comes to the world through a physical body, is accompanied by beautiful illustrations that are meant to help open your mind and heart, and bring new awareness and insight. The second half of the book invites you to delve deeper, by exploring a different theme for each of the poem's eight sections. The Midwife's Story will assist you on the journey through Advent and help you learn what healing or growth God is wanting to bring to birth in you.