As a spiritual director, theologian, teacher and chaplain, Christopher Southgate’s poetry resonates deeply with human experience and has received wide recognition. Here he collects together new and some of his most popular poems that touch on spiritual themes. A number of commissioned poems feature in this collection, including one on the King James Bible, quoted by Rowan Williams at the 400th anniversary service in Westminster Abbey. Other poems are drawn directly from biblical narratives, or reflect on the person of Jesus. Also included are poems focusing on places of spiritual significance: Iona, Lindisfarne, Patmos, and the site of 9/11 in Manhattan, as well as poems about suffering and grief including the popular work ‘Coming to Terms’, featured on BBC Radio 4.

After Rain Falls is BOOK TWO OF TWO in the River of Rain Duet. In order to understand the contents of this book, you must read Follow the River first. This is the conclusion of River and Rain's story.Love has never been important to me. Not because I didn't want it, I just never imagined feeling something so powerful.There was a point where I thought I felt it years ago for the person I trusted most in the world, only to have it shatter in a thousand pieces.But now he's back in my life and I'm certain I was wrong.Because nothing compares to the way I feel about River Lennox. Nothing could have prepared me for the war we waged against one another to turn into a battle to not only find ourselves, but each other.Our prison sentence became our sanctuary from anything-or anyone-who dared to rip us apart.He crawled under my skin, into my heart, and made a home for himself there despite my efforts to stop him.But it doesn't matter now. Not when I find myself being thrown into a chess game I never asked to play with decisions forced on me that no one should have to make.It's not just life and death.It's love and hate.The past and the future.Except...when my past comes knocking with a thirst for vengeance, I start to question if I have a future at all.

A hardboiled novel about life in the American underground, from the pool halls of Portland to the cells of San Quentin. Simply one of the finest books ever written about being down on your luck. Don Carpenter’s Hard Rain Falling is a tough-as-nails account of being down and out, but never down for good—a Dostoyevskian tale of crime, punishment, and the pursuit of an ever-elusive redemption. The novel follows the adventures of Jack Levitt, an orphaned teenager living off his wits in the fleabag hotels and seedy pool halls of Portland, Oregon. Jack befriends Billy Lancing, a young black runaway and pool hustler extraordinaire. A heist gone wrong gets Jack sent to reform school, from which he emerges embittered by abuse and solitary confinement. In the meantime Billy has joined the middle class—married, fathered a son, acquired a business and a mistress. But neither Jack nor Billy can escape their troubled pasts, and they will meet again in San Quentin before their strange double drama comes to a violent and revelatory end.