As a fourth grader at Holy Cross Grammar School, Matt Weber asked his religion teacher why St. Francis was often pictured with holes in his hands and feet. She responded that those holes were known as the stigmata and that they reflected the wounds Jesus received during his crucifixion. "And how did he get them?" the curious Weber asked. "He got them because he was a good Catholic," was the reply. And so that night, Weber recounts, he did a little more sinning than usual—just to be certain he wouldn’t receive the stigmata! In Fearing the Stigmata, twenty-something Matt Weber—a Harvard graduate, television producer, and certified rosary-bead carrier—employs his sharp wit, earnest candor, and gift for great storytelling to illustrate for young adult Catholics both the real challenges and the immense joys of publicly living out the Catholic faith. The fact that Weber has discovered a way to have a deep, ever-growing faith life that also manages to be culturally relevant will offer hope to many currently disengaged Catholics in the 18-to-35 age range. From smuggling ice-cream sundaes into cloistered convents to telling jokes to an outdoor statue of Mary at a busy intersection in Boston, Fearing the Stigmata amusingly but honestly explores the tension this layman experiences between wanting to be holy yet “fearing being made holey,” and wanting to be good yet not wanting the cost to be too high. Indeed, Weber attends Mass every Sunday morning; but the temptation is there, he admits, to sneak out early so he won’t miss kickoff!

Palmer Eldritch returns from the edge of the universe with a drug called Chew-D for the colonists of Mars who are under threat of god-like or satanic psychics that threaten to wage war against the human soul.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning editor offers a stunning debut novel--a lyrical story told through through a panoply of voices that matches the best in the rich tradition of African-American fiction, while charting new territory with its exploration of a young girl's apparent descent into madness.

Hèléne Cixous -- author, playwright and French feminist theorist -- is a key figure in twentieth-century literary theory. Stigmata brings together her most recent essays for the first time. Acclaimed for her intricate and challenging writing style, Cixous presents a collection of texts that get away -- escaping the reader, the writers, the book. Cixous's writing pursues authors such as Stendhal, Joyce, Derrida, and Rembrandt, da Vinci, Picasso -- works that share an elusive movement in spite of striking differences. Along the way these essays explore a broad range of poetico-philosophical questions that have become characteristic of Cixous' work: * love's labours lost and found * feminine hours * autobiographies of writing * the prehistory of the work of art Stigmata goes beyond theory, becoming an extraordinary writer's testimony to our lives and times.

“A triumph. This novel’s haunting strength will hold the reader until the very end and make Faith and her story impossible to forget.” —Richmond Times Dispatch “Extraordinary.” —Orlando Sentinel From the #1 New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult (Nineteen Minutes, Change of Heart, Handle with Care) comes Keeping Faith: an “addictively readable” (Entertainment Weekly) novel that “makes you wonder about God. And that is a rare moment, indeed, in modern fiction” (USA Today).

Since the Early Church, Catholic saints and other visionaries have reported horrific scenes of eternal punishment. Dozens of saints throughout history have described the terrors of hell, and relayed horror of being separated from God for eternity so that we may see for ourselves and repent.

In 1972, a young Franciscan friar named Murray Bodo wrote a unique book about the life of St. Francis of Assisi. Francis: The Journey and the Dream offered readers a unique combination of lyrical prose and brief, absorbing vignettes that inspired hundreds of thousands of people all over the world to contemplate the life of the famous saint and see him in a new way. Fifty years and over 200,000 copies later, this book still captivates people everywhere, and Fr. Bodo is still writing about St. Francis and the Franciscan way of life. His poetic style continues to draw readers in, and he himself continues to gaze in wonder at the saint who worked nearly his entire life to rebuild the church. This special anniversary edition includes a new preface in which Fr. Bodo reflects on a half century spent immersed in the Franciscan way.

In Jesus the Bridegroom, Brant Pitre once again taps into the wells of Jewish Scripture and tradition, and unlocks the secrets of what is arguably the most well-known symbol of the Christian faith: the cross of Christ. In this thrilling exploration, Pitre shows how the suffering and death of Jesus was far more than a tragic Roman execution. Instead, the Passion of Christ was the fulfillment of ancient Jewish prophecies of a wedding, when the God of the universe would wed himself to humankind in an everlasting nuptial covenant. To be sure, most Christians are familiar with the apostle Paul's teaching that Christ is the 'Bridegroom' and the Church is the 'Bride'. But what does this really mean? And what would ever possess Paul to compare the death of Christ to the love of a husband for his wife? If you would have been at the Crucifixion, with Jesus hanging there dying, is that how you would have described it? How could a first-century Jew like Paul, who knew how brutal Roman crucifixions were, have ever compared the execution of Jesus to a wedding? And why does he refer to this as the "great mystery" (Ephesians 5:32)? As Pitre shows, the key to unlocking this mystery can be found by going back to Jewish Scripture and tradition and seeing the entire history of salvation, from Mount Sinai to Mount Calvary, as a divine love story between Creator and creature, between God and Israel, between Christ and his bride--a story that comes to its climax on the wood of a Roman cross. In the pages of Jesus the Bridegroom, dozens of familiar passages in the Bible--the Exodus, the Song of Songs, the Wedding at Cana, the Woman at the Well, the Last Supper, the Crucifixion, and even the Second Coming at the End of Time--are suddenly transformed before our eyes. Indeed, when seen in the light of Jewish Scripture and tradition, the life of Christ is nothing less than the greatest love story ever told.

After a New Jersey priest has a near-death experience he begins to resemble the image depicted on the Shroud of Turin, prompting a skeptical Vatican representative to investigate the claim and subsequently question the assumptions he has held for so long. THE PRIEST… Brought back to life on an operating room table, Father Paul Bartholomew is haunted by visions of Christ as Golgotha. Then, as he celebrates Mass, blood starts running down his arms. The horrified congregation watches him collapse, his vestments soaked in the blood pouring from wounds on his wrists. Mysteriously, he now resembles in almost every physical aspect the Christ-like figure represented on the Shroud of Turin. THE SKEPTICS… Worried lest Bartholomew’s case be proved a hoax, the Vatican employs two prominent scientists to investigate. Dr. Stephen Castle, an American psychiatrist, is renowned for his book arguing that religion is a figment of human imagination. Professor Marco Gabrielli, an Italian religious researcher and chemist, has made a career of debunking supposed miracles, of explaining the unexplainable. THE MIRACLE… For centuries, the Shroud of Turin has defied science. Is this ancient remnant truly Christ’s burial cloth, or the biggest fraud ever perpetrated? When the priest’s uncanny resemblance to the picture on the Shroud prompts Castle and Gabrielli to investigate the artifact itself, each is finally forced to face mysteries reason alone cannot explain—in a journey of discovery that plumbs the farthest reaches of science and the human spirit.