Here is the retreat and catechesis parishes will love to give to everyone in the assembly, a serious booklet that presents Lent as a powerful opportunity for renewal. Individuals can conduct a self-assessment; make resolutions about prayer, fasting and almsgiving; translate resolutions into commitments; reflect on their process in a scripture journal; and prepare for the sacrament of reconciliation.

With this booklet and a Bible in hand, readers will find the solemn mysteries of the Triduum more powerful and more approachable than ever before. This booklet guides individuals in planning their observance of the Three Days as a personal retreat in the midst of the parish's communal celebration. For each day there is commentary on that day's liturgy, scripture citations for reflection, and spaces for writing about personal experiences. Provide everyone in the parish community with a copy on the Fifth Sunday of Lent as a guide into the Three Days.

Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf's fourth novel, offers the reader an impression of a single June day in London in 1923. Clarissa Dalloway, the wife of a Conservative member of parliament, is preparing to give an evening party, while the shell-shocked Septimus Warren Smith hears the birds in Regent's Park chattering in Greek. There seems to be nothing, except perhaps London, to link Clarissa and Septimus. She is middle-aged and prosperous, with a sheltered happy life behind her; Smith is young, poor, and driven to hatred of himself and the whole human race. Yet both share a terror of existence, and sense the pull of death. The world of Mrs Dalloway is evoked in Woolf's famous stream of consciousness style, in a lyrical and haunting language which has made this, from its publication in 1925, one of her most popular novels.

Irreverent and resourceful, Lillian Betts has her dreams. But in 1891, a woman with ambitions to rise into the city's upper echelon requires more than hopes and wishes. One problem is Lillian's a maid, who's snatching illicit kisses with her employer's son. Another is her sister, who wants her help caring for illegitimate babies in exchange for premiums. Taking a well-earned rest in Dutton Park, Lillian witnesses a mother deliver her baby in a grove of trees and abandon it. She must make a quick decision - one that may very well snuff out all her hopes of becoming a lady. For secrets are hard to keep, and some people would love nothing more than to watch her fail.