Showing results for "Churches" in Literary Fiction

The Secret Lives of Church Ladies explores the raw and tender places where Black women and girls dare to follow their desires and pursue a momentary reprieve from being good. The nine stories in this collection feature four generations of characters grappling with who they want to be in the world, caught as they are between the church's double standards and their own needs and passions.

A ravishing first novel, set in vibrant, tumultuous turn-of-the-century New York City, where the lives of four outsiders become entwined, bringing irrevocable change to them all. New York, 1895. Sylvan Threadgill, a night soiler cleaning out the privies behind the tenement houses, finds an...

Tressie faithfully prays every night that God will send her a thug. It isn't long before her prayers are answered, and she meets a handsome ex-convict named Payce Boyd. He is a fine roughneck, everything Tressie imagined and more - that is until Tressie experiences firsthand the reality of being a thug's girl. Seeking solace and comfort in the sanctuary, Tressie soon learns valuable lessons and shocking truths about herself and others.

BOOK 2 IN THE BESTSELLING CANON CLEMENT MYSTERY SERIES 'The best of the new cosy crime writers' Daily Telegraph 'First-class entertainment' Daily Mirror It's been a few months since murder tore apart the community of Champton apart. As Canon Daniel Clement tries to steady his flock, the parish...

With the first disappearance, the townspeople begin to mistrust outsiders. When the second girl goes missing, neighbors and childhood friends start to eye each other warily. And with the third disappearance, the sleepy little town awakens to a full-blown nightmare. The Church of Dead Girls displays Stephen Dobyns' remarkable gifts for exploring human nature, probing the ruinous effects of suspicion.

Whilst faith can be practiced anywhere religious faith is usually at a church or temple. The stories in this volume are centered both in houses of worship and with those with a strong association to its calling. Of course, short story authors have a determined belief in their undoubted talents to make us look at this subject from different angles. In this volume they take us on literary journeys that are revealing and challenging yet always entertaining.

A haunting debut literary noir about a former pastor’s search to find a missing woman in the toxic, contradictory underbelly of southern California. “He was finished with church, with God, with all of it. But to find the girl, he has to go back.” In Mark Haines’s former life, he was an...

In this debut novel, 33-year-old Addie Lockwood bears and surrenders for adoption a son, her only child, without telling his father, little imagining how the secret will shape their lives. Told through letters and spare, precisely observed vignettes, Byrd is an unforgettable story about making and living with the most difficult, intimate, and far-reaching of choices.

The haunting, vivid story of a nun whose past returns to her in unexpected ways, all while investigating a mysterious death and a series of harrowing abuse claims. A young nun is sent by the Vatican to investigate allegations of misconduct at a Catholic school in Iceland. During her time there...

The New York Times bestselling author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy delivers another “luminous, unforgettable, and perfectly rendered” (Dennis Lehane) novel—a poignant and probing psychological drama that follows the lives of three siblings in the wake of a violent crime. One September...

What happens when the Pope and the Dalai Lama decide they need a secret vacation? Roland Merullo’s playful, eloquent, and life-affirming novel finds the world’s two holiest men teaming up for an unsanctioned road trip through the Italian countryside--where they rediscover the everyday...

1914: Anticipating a long summer of freedom at her friend's family estate in Cambridge, Grace Villiers is disappointed by an unexpected addition to their party. Then the new arrival offers to teach Grace to swim, and she is forced to see there is more to Algernon Lake than his reputation. But, with war brewing across Europe, this will be a summer that changes everything.

*A Daily Mirror Best Book of the Year* *A People Best Book of July!* *A New York Post Best Beach Read!* *A Free Press Summer Read!* The author of Black Chalk, "the smart summer thriller you've been waiting for" (NPR), returns with a mesmerizing new novel about a dangerous secret society at...

Alice has been lying to herself for years, holding fast to the belief that the needs of her family far outweigh her own. But her outwardly successful marriage hides dark secrets, and for much of her life the children were the only reason she stuck around. These days, though her successful banker son lives nearby, his young wife seems to do everything she can to keep Alice at bay. As for Alice's other son, he has always been something of a stranger and has been traveling for so long that Alice isn't even sure what continent he is on anymore.

With an abandoned degree behind her and a 30th birthday approaching, amateur writer Bonnie Falls moves out of her parents' home into a nearby flat. Her landlady, Sylvia Slythe, takes an interest in Bonnie, encouraging her to finish one of her stories, in which a young woman moves to the seaside, where she comes under strange influences. As summer approaches, Sylvia suggests to Bonnie that, as neither of them has anyone else to go on holiday with, they should go away together - to the seaside, perhaps.

A cold-blooded killer strikes at the hottest moment: the new head of a sauna-stove company is murdered. . . in the sauna. Who has turned up the temperature and burned him to death? The evidence points in the direction of Anni Korpinen - top salesperson and the victim's potential successor at Steam Devil. And as if hitting middle age, being in a marriage that has lost its purpose, and struggling with work weren't enough, Anni realises that she must be quicker than both the police and the murderer to uncover who is behind it all - before it's too late. .

Penny Baker is winning at life. Sort of. Her work is demanding, her kids are demanding and her husband seems to be undergoing some weird midlife crisis but she is juggling it all - with the added delights of the menopause. But when the charity she works for is thrown into crisis and her mother's dementia advances, the strain starts to show. Can she navigate it all and still somehow keep a smile on her - flushed - face?