Merrily Watkins, parish priest, single mother and Deliverance Consultant to the Diocese of Hereford, heads for the Malvern Hills to investigate an alleged paranormal dimension to a spate of road accidents in the sleepy village of Wychehill. Merrily is called in when two people are killed in a head-on crash that is also linked to the revamped local pub which, it seems, has injected the valley with a shattering, strobing surge of inner-city nightlife... and drugs. When a dealer is found savagely murdered below the great earthen hillfort of Herefordshire Beacon, police ask: is it a ritual killing, a gangland disposal or a cry of outrage? As Merrily and the police follow separate paths towards the truth, Merrily's teenage daughter, Jane, faces the consequences of her own obsession with a possibly prehistoric site in their home village of Ledwardine. Until, on a night of frenzied violence, in a place at the centre of an ancient, universal mystery, the final, shocking connections are made.

This update of a classic work on altar guild ministry offers a lively blend of liturgical history, sacramental theology, and practical hints. The authors combine how-to advice with creative ideas on preparing for the traditional liturgies and simpler, special-occasion services.

Discover your true identity in Christ. Many of us live for the approval of others. We let the world decide who we are, or we look to those around us to discover who we think we’d like to be. The problem is that living for what people think of you is the quickest way to forget what God thinks of you. In Altar Ego, pastor and author of Winning the War in Your Mind Craig Groeschel will show you how to sacrifice your broken ideas of approval-based identity on the altar of God’s truth and become who you were meant to be in Christ. You'll learn how to: Expose false labels and selfish motives. Live according to God's higher values with a deeper confidence in His calling. Trade in your broken ego and unleash your “altar” ego as a living sacrifice to Him. Understand how God continuously shapes you into His vision of you. Once you know your true identity and are growing in Christ-like character, then you can behave accordingly with bold behavior, bold prayers, bold words, and bold obedience. Altar Ego reveals who God says you are, and then calls you to live up to it. Rather than living a timid, halfhearted, shallow cultural Christianity, you'll boldly live in the confidence of the God who believes in you.

In all the coverage of the priestly sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, one story has been left untold: the story of the everyday lives of Catholic priests in America, which remain so little understood as to be a secret, even as one priestly sexual predation after another has come to light. In The Other Side of the Altar, Paul Dinter tells one priest's story--his own--in such a way as to reveal the lives of a generation of priests that spanned two very different eras. These priests entered the ministry in the 1960s, when Catholic seminaries were full of young men inspired by both the Church's ancient faith and the Second Vatican Council's promises of renewal. But by the early 1970s, the priesthood--and the celibate fraternity it depended upon--proved quite different from what the Council had promised. American society had changed, too, particularly in the area of sexuality. As a result, there emerged a clerical subculture of denial and duplicity, which all but guaranteed that the sexual abuse of children by priests would be routinely covered up by the Church's bishops. Dinter, now married and raising two stepdaughters, left the priesthood in 1994 over the issue of celibacy, but not before having occasion to reflect on the whole range of priestly struggles with celibacy and sexual life in general--in Rome and rural England, on an Ivy League campus, and in parish rectories of the archdiocese of New York. His candid and affecting account--written from the other side of the altar, so to speak--makes clear that celibacy, sexuality, and power among the clergy have long been intertwined, and suggests how much must change if the Catholic Church hopes to regain the trust of its people.

The tragic death of 13-year-old Danny Croteau in 1972 faded from headlines and memories for 20 years until the Boston abuse scandal--a string of assaults within the Catholic Church--exploded in the early 2000s. Despite numerous indications--including 40 claims of sexual misconduct with minors--pointing to him as Croteau's killer, the Reverend Richard R. Lavigne remains "innocent." Drawing on more than 10,000 pages of police and court records and interviews with Danny's friends and family, fellow abuse victims, and church officials, the author uncovers the truth--church complicity in a cover up and the masking of priests' involvement in a ring of abusive clergy--behind Croteau's death and those who had a hand in it.

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.

A deathbed confession ignites a globe-spanning race for answers in this page-turning thriller described as The Da Vinci Code meets The Bourne Identity. “They didn’t have to kill him…He never drank from the altar of bones.” Cryptic dying words from a murdered homeless woman in present-day San Francisco unlock a long-buried secret that alters history. Now, a pair of ruthless assassins are sent to cut the few living “loose ends.” And a young, resourceful woman on the run encounters a determined man with his own connected past and vengeful agenda. Forced to partner for survival and answers, a fast-paced and deadly game of cat and mouse ensues, whisking the duo from the winding streets of Paris to the faded palaces of Budapest to the frozen lakes of Mongolia...where destiny, passion, and further betrayal await them. Jam-packed with pulse-pounding action and featuring a high-profile assassination, a doomed Hollywood legend, and guardians of an ancient religious icon housing a secret others will kill to possess, The Altar of Bones is certain to leave readers stunned and breathless.