In spite of all the stories about Germany during Hitler's heyday, virtually nothing has been written about the 105 Marian Apparitions that occurred from 1937 - 1940. The sightings happened in Heede, a village close to the Dutch border and less than twenty miles from the birthplace of author Hans Rolfes. Totally unexpected, not unlike what took place in Lourdes, the sightings were seen by four local girls. This raised the ire in Berlin to such an extent that the girls, then 11 to 13, were placed in a mental institution and a hospital for ten weeks. Hitler's obsessive interest was the industrial behemoth Krupp and its nearby firing range, where the "Big Bertha" rattled dishes in the author's home as it threw one-ton shells airborne. The events in Heede, so good, so pure, so hard-to-explain had no value for him. Today he and his ilk are gone, but tens of thousands of Christians flock annually to the area. The veil of silence surrounding Heede was lifted only recently, with its official recognition as a Marian Prayer Site. Many more events are described, including the author's unbelievable experience when he and other boys investigated an Allied bomb that suddenly, precipitously, exploded.... Hans G. Rolfes is a retired professional engineer who lives in Westchester, N.Y. He was a senior consultant for General Foods for a quarter century-the basis for his book, General Foods, America's Premier Food Company. He has visited and studied at the apparition site in Heede, Germany, many times.

2013 marks the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of Blessed Antoine-Frederic Ozanam. The worldwide Society of Saint Vincent de Paul has planned celebrations for his birthday and feast day.

This new biography, the first in English in many years, is dedicated to this remarkable Catholic layman.

From a small-town New Jersey girl to a world-renowned new age teacher, Elizabeth Clare Prophet underwent a remarkable transformation. At age twenty-four, she began taking "dictations," or messages, from a group of saints and sages known as the ascended masters. By age forty, she was called Mother and Guru Ma by thousands of followers, and also known as a prophet (her real last name). She had also begun to be labeled a controversial cult leader. Now at the age of seventy, she publishes a memoir of her early years.

In never-before-released material from interviews, letters and diaries, she explores her spiritual quest from birth through age twenty four. Part I describes a conventional upbringing in 1950s small-town America. But, as she reveals, the roots of her spiritual quest were there from an early age, expressed in childhood in her remarkable devotion to the proto new age Christian Science. She tells how her religion helped her to cope with her father's alcoholism and the childhood onset of epilepsy. Part II reveals her teenage ups and downs, experiments with Eastern thought and modern philosophy, and an early marriage to a fellow Christian Scientist. Finally, she describes her choice to make the radical change of leaving that marriage to follow Mark Prophet, who became her teacher and second husband.

The work is threaded with her descriptions of the presence of God that she believes overshadowed her from the moment of birth. She tells how that presence led her into a spiritual work that touched the lives of thousands. This revealing, personal journey probes the very essence of spirituality.

Born without a dowry, nearly forced into a convent, and later married off to a man she didn't love, Olimpia Maidalchini vowed never to be poor, powerless, or beholden to any man again. Instead, using her wits, Olimpia became the unofficial ruler of the most powerful institution in the world: the Roman Catholic Church.

The Church firmly states that women must be excluded from church leadership positions--but for more than a decade in the seventeenth century, Olimpia ran the Vatican. As sister-in-law and reputed mistress of the indecisive Pope Innocent X, she appointed cardinals, negotiated with foreign ambassadors, and helped herself to a heaping portion of the Papal States' treasury.

In Mistress of the Vatican, New York Times bestselling author Eleanor Herman brings to life not only an extraordinary woman lost in history but an entire civilization in all its greatness . . . and ignominy. This is the unforgettable story of a woman ahead of her time.

Devastated by the death of Jan, her husband of thirty-seven years, author Ann Tremaine Linthorst felt compelled to find a fresh sense of the meaning of her own life. A longing for a new love affair surprisingly launched her on an inward journey through her past. She found her many life adventures recast as spiritual epiphanies.

"In My Love Affairs with Life: A Spiritual Memoir," Linthorst takes us along on her daily nature walks, her year of seminary study in Scotland, and a family pilgrimage to medieval English cathedrals. She shares seminal insights from novels by C. S. Lewis and Charles Williams and the poetry of Mary Oliver. Linthorst introduces us to the spiritual teachers who brought healing and transformation, and opens up about the funny and painful romance that led to her marriage to Jan, a Jesuit priest from Holland.

Throughout "My Love Affairs with Life: A Spiritual Memoir," Linthorst allows herself to be shown where God has consistently met her in beauty and love. Enter into the very process of spiritual self-discovery and find a fresh perspective on your own life story.

From the moment of his birth in 1937, author Peter Walther was absorbed into the culture of the Catholic Church. Later, as an elevenyear-old boy, he believed he was called by God to be a missionary priest. Seventeen years later, he found himself-an ordained Catholic priest-journeying to a mission station in Sabah, North Borneo. A Calling in Question tells Walther's story of his struggle to free himself from the tangled web of a Catholic upbringing.

This memoir presents a collage of several stories, weaving in and out like patterns in a fabric. It is the story of a small boy, growing up in the midst of a world war. It is the story of a family caught in the disintegration of the British class system. It is the story of a Catholic Church, toying with the challenge of change and failing to accept that challenge. It is the story of his experiences deep in the Borneo rain forest, where he initiates a project to teach desperately needed vocational skills. It is a story of his burgeoning relationship with a local health worker that forces Walther to finally confront his ambivalence about being a priest.

Most of all, however, "A Calling in Question" narrates the story of a young man struggling to be authentic while breaking from the embrace of a Catholic culture that had become a substitute for family.