THE FIRST CHILLING NOVEL IN THE ACCLAIMED ROBERT HUNTER SERIES When the body of a young woman is discovered in a derelict cottage in Los Angeles, Robert Hunter is thrown into a nightmare case. The victim suffered a terrible death, and on the nape of her neck has been carved a strange double-cross: the signature of a psychopath known as the Crucifix Killer. But that's impossible. Because two years ago, the Crucifix Killer was caught and executed. Could this therefore be a copycat killer? Or could the unthinkable be true? Is the real killer still out there, ready to embark once again on a vicious and violent killing spree, selecting his victims seemingly at random, taunting Robert Hunter with his inability to catch him? Hunter and his rookie partner, Garcia, need to solve this case and fast. PRAISE FOR CHRIS CARTER 'Gripping . . . Not for the squeamish' Heat 'A page turner' Express

This book on Islam has an unusual perspective. It argues that a critically minded examination of Islam can help Christians achieve a deeper appreciation of the unique truths of their own faith. It draws on the author’s personal experiences living in Islamic countries and his fieldwork with persecuted Christian-minority communities, especially in Pakistan, Yemen, Egypt, and Indonesia. It includes the author’s own original translations of Islamic texts in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu, as well as primary-source materials in Latin that were written by Christian participants in the Crusades. The author focuses on Muslim interactions with the Christian tradition. He examines and takes issue with the misguided approach of those Christians and Muslims who, in the interests of Christian-Muslim rapprochement, minimize theological differences between the two faiths, especially in the area of Christology. Such attempts at rapport, he writes, do a profound disservice to both religions. Illustrating the Muslim view of Christ with Islamic polemical texts from the eleventh to the twenty-first centuries, the author draws on Hans Urs von Balthasar, and other theologians of kenotic Christology, to show how Islamic condemnations of divine "weakness" and "neediness" can deepen our appreciation of what is most uniquely Christian in our vision of Jesus as God-made-man, who voluntarily experiences weakness, suffering, and death in solidarity with all human beings. Both timely and urgently needed, The Crucifix on Mecca's Front Porch invites readers to reflect on the stark differences between Christianity and Islam and to appreciate the uniqueness of the Christian faith.

At the age of fourteen, Marciano kills a pedophilic abbot with the sharpened point of a crucifix, driving him to take refuge in a remote mountain villa in Corsica, devoted to training assassins and forcing him into a career as a notorious assassin known as The Crucifix. Later, he attempts to break free of his French Milieu masters and is pursued from Morocco to Paris, the Greek island of Mykonos, Messina, and finally, the Spanish Sahara. Throughout, he strives to find a belief, not in God so much, but in something more significant, his true nature.

The cross stirs intense feelings among Christians as well as non-Christians. Robin Jensen takes readers on an intellectual and spiritual journey through the two-thousand-year evolution of the cross as an idea and an artifact, illuminating the controversies—along with the forms of devotion—this central symbol of Christianity inspires. Jesus’s death on the cross posed a dilemma for Saint Paul and the early Church fathers. Crucifixion was a humiliating form of execution reserved for slaves and criminals. How could their messiah and savior have been subjected to such an ignominious death? Wrestling with this paradox, they reimagined the cross as a triumphant expression of Christ’s sacrificial love and miraculous resurrection. Over time, the symbol’s transformation raised myriad doctrinal questions, particularly about the crucifix—the cross with the figure of Christ—and whether it should emphasize Jesus’s suffering or his glorification. How should Jesus’s body be depicted: alive or dead, naked or dressed? Should it be shown at all? Jensen’s wide-ranging study focuses on the cross in painting and literature, the quest for the “true cross” in Jerusalem, and the symbol’s role in conflicts from the Crusades to wars of colonial conquest. The Cross also reveals how Jews and Muslims viewed the most sacred of all Christian emblems and explains its role in public life in the West today.

Few medieval images are as iconic, or as challenging, as the life-sized sculptural crucifixes that emerged in the Holy Roman Empire at the end of the tenth century. Striking at the fundamental mysteries of Christianity--the idea of a God made flesh, who died on the Cross and was resurrected after three days--these objects were made to attract attention and inspire veneration, and they exist in uneasy tension with medieval anxieties about idolatry and the cult of images. This volume presents new research on the Boston Crucifix, the earliest medieval crucifix in North America and one of the most significant examples of the genre, in dialogue with new directions in this field as a whole. Essays on the history, theology, style, condition, and provenance of early wood crucifixes are presented here together for the first time in a format that is intended as a major scholarly resource, but will also prove accessible to students and non-specialists who are curious about the origins of monumental crucifixes in the High Middle Ages.

Some years ago a respected pediatrician gifted author Rev. Dr. Marlene Louise Walters, his precious heirloom crucifix. But at the time of the gift, she couldn’t remember where she had crossed paths with this well-known man, who died soon after their encounter. In A Crucifix, Walters shares the story of this crucifix and the adventure it presented to unveil the reason for this gift given by this curious visitor. The odyssey expands through years of anecdotes during her life in experiences as Walters seeks to discover the mystery of the keepsake. Her unanticipated journey interrupts her domesticated life with ferocious intrusion. It began with allowiing abortions for the disabled and ends with allowing doctors to assist in suicide. Throughout this memoir, she conronicles her quest to discover why a respected Delaware pediatrician, someone she barely knew, would give his family crucifix to her. A Crucifix journeys through a variety of settings questioning many ethical controversies, creating support groups, inspiring families in grief and finding agape love in unusual settings.

Here, Jennifer Scheper Hughes traces popular devotion to the Cristo Aparecido over five centuries of Mexican history. Each chapter investigates a single incident in the encounter between believers and the image.