A commonly held impression is that Pope Francis is a compassionate shepherd and determined leader but that he lacks the intellectual depth of his recent predecessors. Massimo Borghesi’s The Mind of Pope Francis: Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s Intellectual Journey dismantles that image. Borghesi recounts and analyzes, for the first time, Bergoglio’s intellectual formation, exploring the philosophical, theological, and spiritual principles that support the profound vision at the heart of this pope’s teaching and ministry. Central to that vision is the church as a coincidentia oppositorum, holding together what might seem to be opposing and irreconcilable realities. Among his guiding lights have been the Jesuit saints, Ignatius and Peter Faber; philosophers Gaston Fessard, Romano Guardini, and Alberto Methol Ferrer; and theologians Henri de Lubac and Hans Urs von Balthasar. Recognizing how these various strands have come together to shape the mind and heart of Jorge Mario Bergoglio offers essential insights into who he is and the way he is leading the church. Notably, this groundbreaking book is informed by four interviews provided to the author, via audio recordings, by the pope himself on his own intellectual formation, major portions of which are published here for the first time.

Kraig Holmes is a hard-working independent contractor living in Baltimore. He's an average guy—with one exception. A painful secret haunts him daily. Kraig had a one-time sexual experience with a man he knew little about. It propelled him into a lifestyle of promiscuity and an insatiable appetite for dangerous sex. When the guy disappeared into thin air, Kraig was left hurt and devastated. Now Kraig has developed a taste for the married men who pursue him while he's working on their homes. When his sexual escapades spiral out of control and out into the open, he quickly tries to get things under wraps. Then the unexpected happens—a chance encounter with his one night stand from college. Kraig is hurt when he discovers the man doesn't even remember him. Kraig vows to set up the man who turned him out and disappeared. What Kraig doesn't know is that his "victim" isn't the lay-down-and-take-it type. He has a few cards up his sleeve that will deliver damaging blows to Kraig's life. When it's all said and done, the truth with be revealed, and there will be consequences. M.T. Pope delivers another hot, scandalous tale full of lust, infidelity, and over-the-top drama.

"This is a very visual novel and the attention to detail is so rich that I could smell the dirty water dogs from the NYC street vendors. Bravo!" Romeo Tirone, Director of True Blood, Dexter, and Red Widow "Daniel O'Connor's Sons of the Pope reveals an interesting new talent with a snappy style. This is someone's career to watch." Andrew Neiderman, Author of The Devil's Advocate and several V.C. Andrews novels "A rich, epic chronicle of murder, the mob, and miracles..." Kevin O'Brien, NY Times Bestselling Author *** In Brooklyn, before the murders, before the miracle, before the 1940s were gone forever, there was a tree. If only they let that tree alone. If that sycamore tree had been allowed to stand, then maybe Biaggio Falcone never would have been the head of the Campigotto crime family. Perhaps little Joey Salerno would not have been born like that. Joey's father, Sal - just home from World War II - probably would never have gotten involved with the New York underworld, and his wife Mary wouldn't have spent her entire life caring for an eternal child. There may have been no reason, four decades later, for that desperate pilgrimage to Lourdes, France. And no need for anyone to call upon the one known only as The Diabolist. Experience the richness of a story that spans half a century. Love and hatred. Devotion and betrayal. Murder and miracles. If only they let that tree alone.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744) was the greatest English poet of his age, whose acerbic insights into human nature have entered the language, and whose verse still astonishes with its energy and inventiveness centuries after his death. This new selection of Pope's work follows the path of his poetic genius over his lifetime. It contains early poems including the masterly mock-epic 'The Rape of the Lock', which satirizes a notorious society scandal through glorious heroic couplets, the brilliantly aphoristic 'An Essay on Criticism' and excerpts from his translation of the Iliad. Later poems represented include Pope's ironic adaptations of Horace's Epistles, Satires and Odes, and the remarkable 'Dunciad', a stinging attack on his literary rivals and the mediocrity of Grub Street hacks. Here too are selected prose works and letters from Pope to his contemporaries such as John Gay and Jonathan Swift.