Young Clare Gilmour, the second daughter of an upper middle class London family, is freshly "out" but can't find a place for herself. She meets Roderick Vaughan who sees her naive vulnerability and convinces her to run away with him. Vaughan knows that the family horror of public scandal will lead to a wedding, and so it does, despite the fact that he is vulgar and ill-bred. After the wedding, she discovers she is married to a bully and can't escape him. She meets Basil Everett and finds a person who wants to love her as she is. Ultimately, she is bound by England's divorce laws, unless she and Basil can find a way to escape them.

"Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance," or so Charlotte Lucas claims. Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy put this notion to the test when they find themselves in a passionate and unexpected marriage.

This collection of essays considers what light is shed on Pauline soteriology by giving focused attention to the apostle's language and conception of sin. Sometimes Paul appears to present sin and disobedience as transgression, while at other times sin is personified and treated as an enslaving power. Is there a model or perspective that can account for Paul's conceptual range in his discussion of sin? What does careful study of Paul's letters reveal about the christological and pneumatological remedies to the problem of sin as he conceives of them? These questions are explored with attention to individual Pauline letters towards a richer understanding of his attitude towards sin and its remedy.

The biblical-theological approach Boda takes in this work is canonical-thematic, tracing the presentation of the theology of sin and its remedy in the canonical form and shape of the Old Testament. The hermeneutical foundations for this enterprise have been laid by others in past decades, especially by Brevard Childs in his groundbreaking work. But A Severe Mercy also reflects recent approaches to integrating biblical understanding with other methodologies in addition to Childs’s. Thus, it enters the imaginative space of the ancient canon of the Old Testament in order to highlight the “word views” and “literary shapes” of the “texts taken individually and as a whole collection.” For the literary shape of the individual texts, it places the “word views” of the dominant expressions and images, as well as various passages, in the larger context of the biblical books in which they are found. For the literary shape of the texts as a collection, it identifies key subthemes and traces their development through the Old Testament canon. The breadth of Boda’s study is both challenging and courageous, resulting in the first comprehensive examination of the topic in the 21st century.

Overly concerned about what people think of you? Edward T. Welch uncovers the spiritual dimension of people-pleasing—what the Bible calls fear of man—and points the way through a true knowledge of God, ourselves, and others.