Helen Dunmore

#2

Simone is thirty-eight, a district judge whose husband, Donald, is on the verge of bankruptcy and breakdown. Each morning she leaves him with their two young boys while she drives to court to assess evidence and pass judgment. In her public life she must "make sense of things that really don't make sense at all." In her private life she struggles to control chaos and mounting debt, with only an early-morning cold swim to keep her sane. One such morning a letter arrives, addressed to Simone and postmarked New York. Someone she has tried to forget has not forgotten her. Simone's private history is about to collide with her public world.

#3

There is an alternate story of the life of Jesus. One the early Church fathers found so menacing they outlawed the books that documented it, ordered them burned, and threatened anyone found copying them with death. International bestselling authors and award-winning archaeologists Kathleen O'Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear put more than thirty years of exhaustive research into this fascinating novel. In A.D. 325, Brother Barnabas is a student of the ancient holy texts. These books paint a portrait of Jesus that is radical, heretical, and irresistible. In the writings of Mary Magdalene, Phillip, and James, Barnabas finds clues to a secret he must protect at all costs. But the Ecumenical Council of Bishops has just declared his cherished books "a hotbed of manifold perversity." Emperor Constantine has decreed that the documents must be burned and that anyone found copying them will be executed as a heretic. Barnabas's monastery is attacked. Brother Barnabas flees with his trusted companions, but they are being followed, for the True Church cannot allow them to find the most sacred place on Earth. In fact, it will do anything to stop them...