So what is it about church that makes some people feel like they’re at the periphery of something vital, and the vital thing is somewhere else? According to this book, the answer lies in the tendency for religious practice to... Read More

When the Beloved beckons, as in the story of Krishna that opens this book-journey, the lover drops everything to respond. Moving into that embrace means stepping into what the author calls “the human yearning to live with fearless... Read More

It is a paradox well worth repeating that no single author is ever quite master of his or her literary material: words outwit and outgrow their writers’ best intentions. (That’s why poetry is not journalism.) This humbling wisdom is... Read More

Upon her death in 1905, Mary A. Livermore was hailed by the Boston Transcript as “America’s foremost woman.” It was a fitting epitaph. During the Civil War, Livermore worked tirelessly to ensure proper nutrition and medical care... Read More

When army wife Beth reads on the Internet about the death of any soldier in Iraq, her initial fear is that one might be her husband, Doug. When it isn’t, she feels relieved, then guilty: “The fallen soldiers might not have been her... Read More

Of the author’s celebrated modernist novel, Nightwood, T.S. Eliot wrote that it possessed “the great achievement of a style, the beauty of phrasing, the brilliance of wit and characterization, and a quality of horror and doom very... Read More

A good title goes a long way—not that this author needs any help. Lucky for readers, the ten stories that make up this debut collection are every bit as gripping as the book’s provocative title suggests. Set in and around the... Read More

In a painting by Raphael, Saint George rides forth from a town on his white horse and slays a hideous, voracious dragon. Or … is that Saint Michael, who also slew vicious mystical beasts? Viewers in Renaissance times would have been... Read More