Nathalie Lete: The Girl Who Reads to Birds 500-Piece Puzzle

Madeleine L'Engle

Glimpses of Grace: Daily Thoughts and Reflections

For half a century, Madeleine L'Engle has spun magic with words, touching millions of lives and earning a devoted readership with her award-winning fiction, candid reflections on her personal and family life and graceful meditations on faith. Now, Glimpses of Grace captures the essence of L'Engle's literary gift in one unprecedented volume. Ranging freely throughout L'Engle's remarkable lifework of more than 40 volumes of fiction and nonfiction, adventure stories, family dramas, autobiography and religious commentary, editor Carole P. Chase has collected evocative passages and arranged them as daily readings that offer illuminating bits of wisdom, provocative insight, and, above all, engaging and intelligent daily inspiration. With enduring power and resonance, each of these 366 rich selections speaks to the simple joys and sorrows of daily life and the deepest questions of the human heart and spirit, while reflecting the exhilarating artistry of one of the most spiritually alive and articulate storytellers of this century.

Thomas Merton, William H. Shannon

The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation

Now in paperback, revised and redesigned: This is Thomas Merton's last book, in which he draws on both Eastern and Western traditions to explore the hot topic of contemplation/meditation in depth and to show how we can practice true contemplation in everyday life. Never before published except as a series of articles (one per chapter) in an academic journal, this book on contemplation was revised by Merton shortly before his untimely death. The material bridges Merton's early work on Catholic monasticism, mysticism, and contemplation with his later writing on Eastern, especially Buddhist, traditions of meditation and spirituality. This book thus provides a comprehensive understanding of contemplation that draws on the best of Western and Eastern traditions. Merton was still tinkering with this book when he died; it was the book he struggled with most during his career as a writer. But now the Merton Legacy Trust and experts have determined that the book makes such a valuable contribution as his major comprehensive presentation of contemplation that they have allowed its publication.

Frederick Buechner

The Magnificent Defeat

In The Magnificent Defeat, Frederick Buechner examines what it means to follow Christ, the lessons of Christmas and Easter, the miracles of grace, and "the magnificent defeat" of the human soul of God.