Set in 1700, Honor O'Flynn is a coming of age story about a fourteen year old girl who is kidnapped in Ireland and brought to Maryland to be sold as a bride. She thinks her life is settled and God's will is for her to be a Catholic Nun and teach in her small village. She only wants to remain chaste and return home. She meets William Logsdon, a good Anglican, who buys her contract and agrees to help, but later fell in love with her. Honor makes many mistakes as she struggles with her goals, God, and William. After William is nearly killed, she learns the true will of God. Editor, Petra Bailey Cover Design, Christian Kapahnke

First, this is a book of church humor about all the interesting, if not distracting, people you will meet in church. Interestingly, these same people exist in virtually every fellowship of religious people in the world. Some of them you will recognize immediately, and some may cause you to look more closely to just who is filling that role in your local congregation.
On a deeper level this book is for church professionals who need to be aware of the people who make up that .1% of your church that are causing most of the drag on progress.
Particularly new ministers should read this book so you can recognize these personality types when you encounter them in your ministry. Recognition will remove much of the stress you encounter in the early days of your ministry. For more experienced ministers there is relief in finally recognizing who these people are and what they are doing that seems to inject stress into your life. Finally, it is a handy-dandy guide for all church members to use to be sure that you aren't part of energy drain on your local congregation. Bottle Babies was written in fun. Humor often makes the serious matters easier to see and digest. However, in these days when faith in God is under attack, it is imperative that we remove every trace of the "weight that so easily entangles us."

In "Rethinking Poverty," James P. Bailey argues that most contemporary policies aimed at reducing poverty in the United States are flawed because they focus solely on insufficient income. Bailey argues that traditional policies such as minimum wage laws, food stamps, housing subsidies, earned income tax credits, and other forms of cash and non-cash income supports need to be complemented by efforts that enable the poor to save and accumulate assets. Drawing on Michael Sherraden's work on asset building and scholarship by Melvin Oliver, Thomas Shapiro, and Dalton Conley on asset discrimination, Bailey presents us with a novel and promising way forward to combat persistent and morally unacceptable poverty in the United States and around the world.

"Rethinking Poverty "makes use of a significant body of Catholic social teachings in its argument for an asset development strategy to reduce poverty. These Catholic teachings include, among others, principles of human dignity, the social nature of the person, the common good, and the preferential option for the poor. These principles and the related social analyses have not yet been brought to bear on the idea of asset-building for the poor by those working within the Catholic social justice tradition. This book redresses this shortcoming, and further, claims that a Catholic moral argument for asset-building for the poor can be complemented and enriched by Martha Nussbaum's "capabilities approach." This book will affect current debates and practical ways to reduce poverty, as well as the future direction of Catholic social teaching.

"This book supplies the connections between prophetic but general calls for economic justice and participation, and the concrete policies and practices necessary to advance those ideals as reality. Bailey directly critiques discriminatory economic institutions in the U.S. but also implicitly critiques prior Catholic voices that have fallen far short of inspiring effective reform because they do not identify and attack underlying assumptions behind the 'personal responsibility' models of prosperity." --Lisa Sowle Cahill, Boston College

"Bailey combines his deep understanding of the Catholic social justice tradition, his firm grasp of contemporary moral philosophy, and his perceptive analysis of U.S. poverty debates and policies to forge something new and exciting for each. Bailey's most significant contribution is his compelling case for the Church to establish, or reestablish, asset and property ownership at the heart of its mission to reduce poverty, enhance human dignity, and achieve a more just society." --Ray Boshara, Vice President and Senior Research Fellow, New America Foundation

"Poverty may be with us always; but seldom do we have such a wise and timely book. Drawing upon Catholic social teaching and Martha Nussbaum's capability theory, Bailey underscores the role of asset formation in understanding and alleviating poverty. Erudite, but never arid, "Rethinking Poverty" is indispensable reading for students and scholars who would make the 'option for the poor' their own today." --William O'Neill, S. J., Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University