The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi


Candide Chalippe - 2003
    REVISED AND RE-EDITED BY FATHER HILARION DUERK, O.F.M.

Papillon


Henri Charrière - 1969
    Sentenced to life imprisonment in the penal colony of French Guiana, he became obsessed with one goal: escape. After planning and executing a series of treacherous yet failed attempts over many years, he was eventually sent to the notorious prison, Devil's Island, a place from which no one had ever escaped . . . until Papillon. His flight to freedom remains one of the most incredible feats of human cunning, will, and endurance ever undertaken.Charrière's astonishing autobiography, Papillon, was published in France to instant acclaim in 1968, more than twenty years after his final escape. Since then, it has become a treasured classic -- the gripping, shocking, ultimately uplifting odyssey of an innocent man who simply would not be defeated.

Deadly Mistress: A True Story of Marriage, Betrayal and Murder (St. Martin's True Crime Library)


Michael Fleeman - 2005
    MURDER GONE West Coast doctor Kenneth Stahl would do anything to free himself from his wife Carolyn. Then Adriana Vasco-Kenneth's former receptionist and mistress of nine years-obliged by introducing him to ex-con Dennis Earl Godley. The deal was set. Godley would murder Carolyn for thirty-thousand dollars. On the day after her 44th birthday, the trusting victim was lured to a lonely stretch of road. The deadly rendezvous took a shocking turn. Not only was Carolyn gunned down with a .357 Magnum, but Kenneth would also be killed.The hit man's getaway driver was the other woman, Adriana Vasco. In a sensational trial, a tangled web of lies, sex, and betrayal unfolded as Adriana and Dennis turned against each other...

The Night of the Party


Rachael English - 2018
    By the end of the night, the parish priest, Father Leo Galvin, is dead.The lives of four teenagers - Tom, Conor, Tess and Nina - who had been drinking beer and smoking in a shed at the back of the house, will never be the same. But one of them carries a secret from that night that he has never shared. The friends go on to lead very different, separate lives - some quiet, others in the media spotlight - but the four remain connected by what happened during the time of the big snow.As the thirty-fifth anniversary of Father Galvin's murder approaches, Conor, now a senior police officer, becomes obsessed with the crime his father failed to solve. He believes that Tom can help identify Father Galvin's killer. But does Tom wish to break his silence? His dilemma draws the four friends back together, forcing them to question their lives and to confront their differences. But only Tom can decide whether Kilmitten's secret will finally be revealed.

Sari Caste


Catherine Kirby - 2001
     Manasa is abandoned by the man she should marry. He marries her sister instead. Meanwhile Manasa finds herself pregnant with his child. She flees her Bengali village wondering where to go. Eventually, she finds herself wandering the streets of Calcutta. Without money or food, life is a daily struggle. Finally, she is taken on by a brothel. She is desperately unhappy until she meets a different sort of man. This man she marries in secret and together they plan her escape from the brothel. Murder, corruption, and intrigue threaten to swallow up the new life they attempt to establish in the beautiful hill country of Darjeeling.

False Victim: Based on a True Story


Kathie Truitt - 2010
    Her life becomes even better when her husband receives a long-awaited promotion and the family moves to a neighborhood near Washington DC. Julie quickly makes friends with neighbors, except for the woman who lives behind her, who simply stares without acknowledgment of Julie. After a while, though, the woman, Lynn, warms up to Julie, and the two form a fast friendship.But this friendship quickly turns strange as Julie learns of Lynn's propensity to lie for attention. She and her family also notice that Lynn has gotten the same car as Julie, has begun to dress like Julie, is getting a pool just like Julie, and is consistently attempting to one-up Julie. At first everyone brushes it off, but when one lie threatens Julie's family, she begins to realize Lynn has some unknown agenda, and Julie is her target. No one else takes it seriously, and many neighbors side with Lynn, even as the situation begins to spiral out of control, until one is found on the stand for attempted murder.Is Lynn a False Victim, or could Julie be guilty? Is there an end to the madness? Will the story end happily? You'll be on the edge of your seat as you await the answers in this gripping, psychological thriller based on a true story.

Ma Polinski's Pockets


Sara Sheridan - 1999
    Setting off to discover why, she rocks her stable existence and uncovers secrets about her mother's experiences as a 5 year old in a concentration camp in WWII. What made Ma Polinski leave Rachel everything and will what she finds set her and her family free?

The Changeling


Gail Gallant - 2019
    A year later, she was reborn. Or so her mother said.The crash occurred on a July night in 1955. The truck hit the Gallant family's car head-on; a few weeks later, newborn baby Gail died from her injuries. Mad with grief, her mother prayed feverishly for Gail's return, convinced that God would bring her child back to her. And when she gave birth within a year to a baby girl who looked identical to her lost child, she believed her prayers had been answered.She named that newborn baby Gail.In this haunting memoir about having and losing faith, Gail Gallant recounts her awe-inspiring true story of life as a changeling--a child born to replace her deceased baby sister. A middle child in a large Catholic family, Gail embraced the belief that she was especially anointed, a status that was reinforced by her stern, devout mother and distant, hard-drinking father. Babies sometimes die, after all, but she was the one that God had chosen to bring back to life.Eventually, this special status--the feeling that she had been singled out by God, and just as importantly, by her mother--became a source of secret anxiety for Gail. Doubt began to cast its shadow. As she grew up, questions plagued her: Why did God save her? What did he want in return? And what if she couldn't live up to his--or her mother's--expectations? What if she wasn't so special after all? Or worse, what if she was a mere imposter, only pretending to be the first Gail, whose life she now lived?For this changeling child with a tortured soul, finding her own identity meant wrestling with sainthood and sin alike. As she rewrote her origin story, Gail battled blinding depression and loss of faith. Ultimately, she discovered her own sense of what is extraordinary in becoming simply herself.

Shoot, Dive, Fly: Stories of Grit and Adventure from The Indian Army


Rachna Bisht Rawat - 2017
    Ballroom dancing, flying fighter planes, detonating bombs, skinning and eating snakes in times of dire need, and everything else in between—there’s nothing our officers can’t do!Read twenty-one nail-biting stories of daring. Hear from some amazing men and women about what the forces have taught them—and decide if the olivegreen uniform is what you want to wear too.

Bury in Haste


Jean Rowden - 2007
    

Sandman


Sean Costello - 2000
    People put their lives in doctors' hands every day--but in no other situation is this so literally true as the moment the anesthesiologist looks casually down at you and says, "You'll be going off to sleep now..."What if the eyes that gaze down at you in that moment of trust and surrender belong to a madman? What if, as you feel yourself slipping away, you see something in those eyes so rank, so terrifying you want to leap off the table and scream?But by then, of course, it's too late.A novel of terror and medical suspense from the author of THE CARTOONIST and HERE AFTERPray you never meet the Sandman...

Devil's Guard: The Real Story


Eric Meyer - 2010
    It's the first in the series to describe their events in the bloodthirsty combat of Indochina. Following the myths and legends about Nazis recruited by the French Foreign Legion to fight in Indochina, Eric Meyer's new book is based on the real story of one such former Waffen-SS man who lived to tell the tale. The Legion recruited widely from soldiers left unemployed and homeless by the defeat of Germany in 1945. They offered a new identity and passport to men who could bring their fighting abilities to the jungles and rice paddies of what was to become Vietnam. These were ruthless, trained killers, brutalised by the war on the Eastern Front, their killing skills honed to a razor's edge. They found their true home in Indochina, where they fought and became a byword for brutal military efficiency.

Becoming Lola


Harriet Steel - 2010
    It brings to vibrant life the true story of Eliza Gilbert, the daughter of an obscure Ensign in the British Army and his cold Irish wife. When she grew up, Eliza changed her name to Lola Montez. She was a dancer, a courtesan, a bigamist, the mistress of a king and the nineteenth-century’s most notorious adventuress. Blazing like a female firecracker across the stages and courts of Europe and beyond, she was, for a while, second only to Queen Victoria in fame.

Hunting with Hemingway


Hilary Hemingway - 2000
    It was an audio-cassette filled with the voice of her father telling outrageous stories about his hunting expeditions with his famous older brother, Ernest Hemingway. In this mesmerizing book, Hilary transcribes these stories, revealing the bond between two larger-than-life brothers -- and tells of her own quest to make peace with the painful parts of the Hemingway legacy.