"A beautiful tribute to a man and his art"---Review of Texas Books --

Its a beautiful, clear spring day, and soon the cherry blossoms will fall from the trees and blanket the ground like snow. This season promises to be extraordinary, but it wont be the same without Da, who passed away at Christmastime. Finn OBrine stares out the window, taking it all in. He cant believe his father will never spend time with him again. And he cant believe theres a bat at his windowtalking to him. Before his death, Mr. OBrine told Finn many stories about colossal dragons, sorcery, and the magic of Wickum Mannor in Irelandbut they couldnt possibly be real, right? Wrong! Magic runs in the OBrine family; its part of their heritage. Now thirteen, Finn will begin to show signs of his magical inheritance any day now. Its time for Finn; his twin sister, Neave; his younger brother, Jack; and his mother, Ailish, to leave the comfort of their home in America and journey to Wickum Manor themselves. They expect a summerlong adventure, but the OBrine children may not be as ready as they think. With all the fantastic things to experience and discover on the four-hundred-acre estate, will Finn want to enroll at the magical Wickum Academy, or will he choose to return to his friends and classes in America at summers end?

Philadelphia's community muralism movement is transforming the City of Brotherly Love into the Mural Capital of the World. This remarkable groundswell of public art includes some 3,500 wall-sized canvases: On warehouses and on schools, on mosques and in jails, in courthouses and along overpasses. In If These Walls Could Talk, Maureen O'Connell explores the theological and social significance of the movement. She calls attention to some of the most startling and powerful works it has produced and describes the narratives behind them. In doing so, O'Connell illustrates the ways that the arts can help us think about and work through the seemingly inescapable problems of urban poverty and arrive at responses that are both creative and effective. This is a book on American religion. It incorporates ethnography to explore faith communities that have used larger-than-life religious imagery to proclaim in unprecedented public ways their self-understandings, memories of the past, and visions of the future. It also examines the way this art functions in larger public discourse about problems facing every city in America. But If These Walls Could Talk is also theological text. It considers the theological implications of this most democratic expression of public art, mindful of the three components of every mural: the pieces themselves, those who create them, and those who interpret them. It illuminates a kind of beauty that seeks after social change or, in other words, the largely unexplored relationship between theological aesthetics and ethics.

A triumphant tale of a young woman and her difficult childhood, The Glass Castle is a remarkable memoir of resilience, redemption, and a revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and wonderfully vibrant. Jeannette Walls was the second of four children raised by anti-institutional parents in a household of extremes.

"Richard Wurmbrand reveals what Communist imprisonment and torture can do to a Christian's mind and faith. In these intensely moving pages, he shows us faith going right to the breaking point and beyond--and remaining unbroken" -- Back cover.

From the Joint Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces and BBC Television series including Lucy Worsley: Mozart's London Odyssey and Six Wives with Lucy Worsley, available on Netflix. “Worsley is a thoughtful, charming, often hilarious guide to life as it was lived, from the mundane to the esoteric.” -The Boston Globe Why did the flushing toilet take two centuries to catch on? Why did medieval people sleep sitting up? When were the two “dirty centuries”? Why, for centuries, did rich people fear fruit? In her brilliantly and creatively researched book, Lucy Worsley takes us through the bedroom, bathroom, living room, and kitchen, covering the history of each room and exploring what people actually did in bed, in the bath, at the table, and at the stove-from sauce stirring to breast-feeding, teeth cleaning to masturbating, getting dressed to getting married-providing a compelling account of how the four rooms of the home have evolved from medieval times to today, charting revolutionary changes in society.