We Need One Another: Responsing to God’s Call to live Together by Jean Vanier (SPCK, £9.99 (£9); 978-0-281-08152-3).
“In April 2008, Jean Vanier led a simple retreat in Nyahururu, Kenya, a place recently shattered by violence and bloodshed. With frequent reference to the Gospel of John, Vanier communicated God’s love and care to a group of deeply shaken people.”
Sea Prayer by Khaled Hosseini (Bloomsbury, £12.99 (£11.70); 978-1-5266-0271-8).
“On a moonlit beach a father cradles his sleeping son as they wait for dawn to break and a boat to arrive. He speaks to his boy of the long summers of his childhood, recalling his grandfather’s house in Syria, the stirring of olive trees in the breeze, the bleating of his grandmother’s goat, the clanking of her cooking pots. And he remembers, too, the bustling city of Homs with its crowded lanes, its mosque and grand souk, in the days before the sky spat bombs and they had to flee. When the sun rises they and those around them will gather their possessions and embark on a perilous sea journey in search of a new home.”
Unimaginable: What we imagine and what we can’t by Graham Ward (I. B. Tauris £20 (£18); 978-1-78453-757-9).
“In his new book, a sequel to the earlier Unbelievable, one of Britain’s most exciting writers on religion here presents a nuanced and many-dimensional portrait of the mystery and creativity of the human imagination.”
The Oxford Illustrated History of the Holy Land, edited by Robert G. Hoyland and H. G. M. Williamson (OUP, £30 (£27); 978-0-19-872439-1).
“The Oxford Illustrated History of the Holy Land covers the 3,000 years which saw the rise of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and relates the familiar stories of the sacred texts with the fruits of modern scholarship. Beginning with the origins of the people who became the Israel of the Bible, it follows the course of the ensuing millennia down to the time when the Ottoman Empire succumbed to British and French rule at the end of the First World War.”
Jesus the Priest by Nicholas Perrin (SPCK, £35 (£31.50); 978-0-281-06501-1).
“This major new study advances our understanding of the historical Jesus by exploring the model of Jesus the priest. As priest, Jesus claims to reveal God’s unchanging character through his own person; as priest, too, he announces the impending eschatological climax, constituted by the arrival of the heavenly temple on earth.”
Selected by Frank Nugent, of the Church House Bookshop, which operates the Church Times Bookshop.
