Fiction

Kit Livingstone met his great-grandfather Cosimo in a rainy alley in London where he discovered the truth about alternate realities.

Now he's on the run--and on a quest--trying to understand the impossible mission he inherited from Cosimo: to restore a map that charts the hidden dimensions of the multiverse. Survival depends on staying one step ahead of the savage Burley Men.

The key is the Skin Map--but where it leads and what it means, Kit has no idea. The pieces have been scattered throughout this universe and beyond.

Mina, from her outpost in seventeenth-century Prague, is quickly gaining both the experience and the means to succeed in the quest. Yet so are those with evil intent who, from the shadows, are manipulating great minds of history for their own malign purposes.

Those who know how to use the ley lines have left their own world behind to travel across time and space--down avenues of Egyptian sphinxes, to an Etruscan tufa tomb, into a Bohemian coffee shop, and across a Stone Age landscape where universes collide--in this, the second quest to unlock the mystery of The Bone House.

The Bright Empires series--from acclaimed author Stephen R. Lawhead--is a unique blend of epic treasure hunt, ancient history, alternate realities, cutting-edge physics, philosophy, and mystery. The result is a page-turning, adventure like no other.

Condemned to burn in the eighth circle of Dante's Hell,

Odysseus, legendary thief and liar of Homer's Odyssey and

Iliad, decides he is going to break out. His adventure begins

with a prayer to Athena Parthenos, who appears to him bear-

ing gifts: his armor, his famous bow, a mysterious leather

pouch, and seven unusual arrows. She then sends him on

a quest through the Underworld along with Diomedes, his

friend from the Trojan War who had been sharing in his eter-

nal punishment. To complete their escape, the goddess warns

them, they must recover their squandered honor and learn to

use "the eighth arrow".

At turns exciting, humorous, and edifying, this action-

packed epic follows Odysseus and Diomedes as they journey

through all the circles of Dante's Hell, where they encoun-

ter various characters from Greek mythology, ancient his-

tory, and Renaissance literature, including Helen of Troy,

Cerberus, Penelope, Homer, Harpies, Centaurs, and eventu-

ally Satan himself. With witty banter and wily stratagems,

the two Greek warriors fight their way through the obstacles

that stand between them and redemption.

The Eighth Arrow is a thoroughly entertaining jailbreak story. Full of allusions to great works of old, it is also gently educa-

tional, and as such it can be read as a guide or a companion

to Dante's Inferno and the works of Homer.

Kit stared at his fellow questors. "Is this it?"

It started with small, seemingly insignificant wrinkles in time: A busy bridge suddenly disappears, spilling cars into the sea. A beast from another realm roams modern streets. Napoleon's army appears in 1930s Damascus ready for battle. But that's only the beginning as entire realities collide and collapse.

The questors are spread throughout the universe. Mina is stuck on a plain of solid ice, her only companion an angry cave lion named Baby. Tony and Gianni are monitoring the cataclysmic reversal of the cosmic expansion--but coming up short on answers. And Burleigh is languishing in a dreary underground dungeon--his only hope of survival the very man he tried to kill.

Kit and Cass are back in the Stone Age trying to reach the Spirit Well. But an enormous yew tree has grown over the portal, effectively cutting off any chance of return. Unless someone can find a solution--and fast--all Creation will be destroyed in the universal apocalypse known as The End of Everything.

In the final volume of the fantastic Bright Empires series, Stephen R. Lawhead brings the multi-stranded tale to a stunning and immensely satisfying conclusion.

Set in present day Manhattan, The Fool of New York City is the tale of two souls who are considered to be fools and idiots in the eyes of most people they encounter.

One is a literal giant, the other an amnesiac who believes he is the 17th century Spanish painter Francisco de Goya, hundreds of years old, aging more slowly than the rest of the human race. Billy the giant has also briefly suffered from amnesia years ago, and he understands the anguish of those who have lost their identity. He is an apparently simple person, a failed basketball player with an enormous good heart who takes Francisco under his wing after they meet through a seeming coincidence. Together they undertake a laborious search to discover Francisco's true past.

The trail leads them to numerous adventures, into the shrouded realm of hidden memories, the ironies and complexities of human character and destiny, of catastrophic evil and of redemption. It is a journey into the mysterious dimensions of the mind. It is about trauma and remembrance in America.

When young Waljan of the Wood is forced to move to a new home in the city, his first instinct is to resist everything about the change. However, it isn't long before his new circumstances put him on a collision course with the evil lurking in Mortinburg, as well as his own true identity . . . an identity that will only become clear if he can somehow discover what lies beyond a mysterious, unassailable wall just outside the city.

In this magnificent and stirring novel, Louis de Wohl turns his famed narrative skill to the story of the soldier and merchant's son who might have been right-hand man to a king ... and who became instead the most beloved of all saints. Set against the tempestuous background of 13th Century Italy and Egypt, here is the magnificent and inspiring story of Francis Bernardone, the brash, pleasure-loving young officer who was to become immortalized as St. Francis of Assisi.

The story teems with action, pageantry and intrigue with finely conceived characters-the beautiful, saintly Clare, Frederick, the hawk-faced King of Sicily and Holy Roman Emperor, the Sultan Al Kamil, Pope Innocent III. The scene shifts from Assisi, Rome and Sicily to the deadly sands of Egypt.

This book was made into a feature film by 20th Century Fox entitled Francis of Assisi, now available on video from Ignatius Press.

Hurtled into the Wood between the Worlds, the children soon find that they can enter many worlds through the mysterious pools there. In one world they encounter the evil Queen Jadis, who wreaks havoc in the streets of London when she is accidentally brought back with them. When they finally manage to pull her out of London, unintentionally taking along Uncle Andrew and a coachman with his horse, they find themselves in what will come to be known as the land of Narnia.

It is 1940, the time of the Phoney War. Britain stands alone with German invaders waiting across the Channel and an anxious population preparing for the bloody battle ahead. In an isolated girls' boarding school, Judy Randall watches the encroachment of the war with a mixture of fascination and fear. She is sixteen-years-old, an anarchic misfit in an institution which prizes rule-keeping and conformity; a Catholic with a Jewish heritage when anti-Semitism is still commonplace and - most inconveniently of all - autistic at a time when her behavior is misunderstood as merely eccentric and insolent.

Bored and frustrated by her inability to help the war effort, Judy becomes obsessed with the idea that her hated headmistress is a Nazi and she goes to increasingly reckless lengths to prove her theory. In the meantime, the adults of the school busy themselves planning how best to protect the children in their care if occupying forces overrun the country. For John Peterson, modern languages teacher and part of a generation who have seen armed conflict before, his own agonizing history forces him to consider what sacrifices he might have to make if the horrors of the war overtake them all...

A Most Dangerous Innocence offers a glimpse into the early days of the Second World War, seen from a sleepy corner of Britain. It is also a meditation on childhood guilt, innocence, loyalty and the courage to stand alone.