UNITED KINGDOM AUTHOR · FICTION · ROMANCE
Eleanor Farnes
Eleanor Farnes was the pen name of Grace Rutherford (née Tomlins), a British writer who wrote over 60 romance novels at Mills & Boon from 1935 to 1979. Eleanor Farnes lived in England, but her family had a home in Spain, where she also spend part of each year. She also traveled widely in Europe, South Africa, and North America. She started to write after marrying and having 2 children. Her hobbies included the restoring of old houses and traveling, that had brought the charm and beauty of exotic locales to her novels, like Spain, Italy or Switzerland, that she knew personally. She also wrote doctor/nurse romances.
Most acclaimed
A change of heart
How did a celebrated theological liberal of the mid-twentieth century have such a dramatic change of heart? After growing up in the heart of rural Methodism in Oklahoma, Thomas Oden found Marx, Nietzsche and Freud storming into his imagination. He joined the post-World War II pacifist movement and became enamored with every aspect of the liberal 1950s Student Christian Movement. Ten years before America's entry into the Vietnam war, he admired Ho Chi Minh as an agrarian patriot. For Oden, every turn was a left turn. At Yale he earned his PhD under H. Richard Niebuhr. Later during his academic year in Heidelberg he met with some of the most formidable minds of the era -- enjoying conversations with Gadamer, Bultmann and Pannenberg, as well as a lengthy discussion with Karl Barth at a makeshift office in Barth's hospital room. Being in Europe allowed Oden to attend Vatican II as an observer and to get his first taste of ancient Christianity. He traveled with his family in a VW microbus through Turkey, Syria and Israel. But slowly he stopped making left turns. His enthusiasm for pacifism, ecumenism, and the interface between theology and psychotherapy were all ambushed by varied shapes of reality. It was a challenge from a Jewish scholar, his friend and mentor Will Herberg, that precipitated his most dramatic turn -- back to the great minds of ancient Christianity. Later a meeting with then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Benedict XVI) planted the seeds for what became Oden's highly influential Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. Thomas Oden's fascinating memoir walks us through not just his personal history but some of the most memorable chapters in twentieth-century theology. - Jacket flap.
Magic Symphony
He was famous, she was a nobody. Erica was heartbroken. She'd been forced to give up her musical training and hopes for a career as a concert pianist. For suddenly, with the death of her stepmother, she had to devote all her time to housekeeping. Then fate lent a hand. Erica met the dynamic Charles Winlake, an eminent conductor. And he, dismayed at this waste of young talent, took an interest in Erica ... an interest that became far more than just professional!
The Happy Enterprise
When Mike Patterson went back to England to see the village where his father had been born, he was full of the ideas -- and, it must be admitted, prejudices -- natural to a highly successful Canadian business man. At first he hadn't much patience with Beech Hampden, its "great house" and its unprogressive, inefficient ways. But he grew to appreciate the beauty of the place, to understand its values ... and he fell in love with an English girl. In the course of an enchanted holiday in Italy he told her so, only to find that his own money, buying the impoverished estate, had enabled the struggling young English heir to become engaged to her. All his life Mike had been accustomed to getting what he wanted. Was he going to fail in this most important want of all?