This Festschrift draws on the research interests of Christopher Rowland. The collection of essays comes from former doctoral students and other friends, many of whom shed light on the angelic contribution to the thought-world of developing Christianity. The significance of the Jewish contribution to developing Christian ideology is critically assessed, including the impact of the original Jewish sources on the earliest Christian belief. The distinguished contributors to this volume include April DeConick, Paul Foster, John Rogerson, Tobias Nicklas and Andrei Orlov.

1899, Glasgow. A man is stabbed to death in a tenement courtyard and Juan Camaron, photographer-cum-sleuth, is enlisted to assist the police investigation. Perhaps his innovative photographic method can bring to light what the naked eye might overlook. Juan is also contending with his own problems. His late father's legacy, a monumental photographic record of Cuban architecture, faces a charge of plagiarism from a mysterious senora. And Jane, his fiancee, is witnessed fleeing the scene of a murder. Juan's hoped-for happiness is threatened and he is torn between finding the killer and finding Jane. But could they be one and the same?

The death of George Armstrong Custer ended the life of one of the most flamboyant, brave, careless, and fascinating characters to ever wear a United States military uniform. His dramatic rise during the Civil War to the brevet rank of brigadier general at twenty-three, and his uncanny ability to stay alive regardless of how recklessly he flung himself at the enemy, gave rise to his image as an almost mythical figure. His life was filled with such good fortune that the term "Custer's Luck" was used to refer to an unusually fortuitous event.
"Road to Disaster "examines Custer's unusual mental and emotional make-up, which played out in his military career, his relationship with his wife, and in the death he and many of his men found at the end of their march into Montana. A clearer picture of the man appears, providing answers as to why military success followed him to the top of his career, and why the Battle of the Little Bighorn became such a shocking disaster in the summer of 1876.

Juan Camarón and his father travel across Cuba in the summer of 1898, photographing the island and its people as the war between Spain and the United States escalates. But tragedy strikes when Juan's father is killed, and his last photos reveal a sinister truth to his final moments: he was not a random victim - he was murdered. Travelling to Scotland, where he has inherited property, Juan immerses himself in the study of photography. When he pioneers a new device that inadvertently solves a crime, he is brought to the attention of local law enforcement, prompting a fateful invitation to help police hunt down a brutal serial killer plaguing the streets of Glasgow.

This Festschrift draws on the research interests of Christopher Rowland. The collection of essays comes from former doctoral students and other friends, many of whom shed light on the angelic contribution to the thought-world of developing Christianity. The significance of the Jewish contribution to developing Christian ideology is critically assessed, including the impact of the original Jewish sources on the earliest Christian belief. The distinguished contributors to this volume include April DeConick, Paul Foster, John Rogerson, Tobias Nicklas and Andrei Orlov.

The winners of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting tell the astonishing story of Mary Clarke. At the age of fifty, Clarke left her comfortable life in suburban Los Angeles to follow a spiritual calling to care for the prisoners in one of Mexico's most notorious jails. She actually moved into a cell to live among drug king pins and petty thieves. She has led many of them through profound spiritual transformations in which they turned away from their lives of crime, and has deeply touched the lives of all who have witnessed the depth of her compassion. Donning a nun's habit, she became Mother Antonia, renowned as "the prison angel," and has now organized a new community of sisters-the Servants of the Eleventh Hour--widows and divorced women seeking new meaning in their lives. "We had never heard a story like hers," Jordan and Sullivan write, "a story of such powerful goodness."

Born in Beverly Hills, Clarke was raised around the glamour of Hollywood and looked like a star herself, a beautiful blonde reminiscent of Grace Kelly. The choreographer Busby Berkeley spotted her at a restaurant and offered her a job, but Mary's dream was to be a happy wife and mother. She raised seven children, but her two unfulfilling marriages ended in divorce. Then in the late 1960s, in midlife, she began devoting herself to charity work, realizing she had an extraordinary talent for drumming up donations for the sick and poor.

On one charity mission across the Mexican border to the drug-trafficking capitol of Tijuana, she visited La Mesa prison and experienced an intense feeling that she had found her true life's work. As she recalls, "I felt like I had come home." Receiving the blessings of the Catholic Church for her mission, on March 19, 1977, at the age of fifty, she moved into a cell in La Mesa, sleeping on a bunk with female prisoners above and below her. Nearly twenty-eight years later she is still living in that cell, and the remarkable power of her spiritual counseling to the prisoners has become legendary.

The story of both one woman's profound journey of discovery and growth and of the deep spiritual awakenings she has called forth in so many lost souls, The Prison Angel is an astonishing testament to the powers of personal transformation.

1898, Glasgow. A man is found stabbed to death in a tenement block and the police are struggling to grasp any leads. Juan Cameron, photographer-cum-sleuth, is drafted in with his trusted camera in the hope he can bring to light what the eye may overlook. Yet Juan has problems of his own. Following the tragic death of his father in Cuba some months before, the man's legacy is threatened by a plagiarism suit from a mysterious senora, and Juan's hoped-for happiness with his fiancee, Jane, might be over before it's even begun - even more so when a visiting professor is murdered and Jane is witnessed fleeing the scene. Juan finds himself torn between finding the killer and finding his fiancee - but are they one and the same? The truth is in the frames.