For All It's Worth

Murder is No Accident: A Hidden Springs Mystery by A.H. Gabhart This the first book by A.H. Gabhart, known as Ann H. Gabhart to many, that I've read and it was a fast paced and intriguing work of fiction.  One of the key elements of the story is the cantankerous nature of the characters in the story, from Deputy Michael Keane, to Aunt Lindy, and Reece, each member at some point in the story rubs each other wrongly and suspicions remain.  In any good story, there must be a bit of uneasiness in the plot that moves the story along.  I found this book to be amusing and easy to follow, and the clues were there to keep you guessing. The story centers around a small town that holds within it the Chandler residence, a mansion that is on the market, an owner of the house, the aged Miss Fonda, the real estate agent Geraldine Harper, sheriff Michael Keane and other characters.  The plot thickens when a body is found at the bottom of the steps to the tower room.  One of the amusing sc

Between Midnight and Dawn , Compiled by Sarah Arthur This vibrant and rich collection of stories, poems, and prayers that connects Lent, Holy Week, and Eastertide is a wonderful compilation.  Called Between Midnight and Dawn, compiled by Sarah Arthur, each an Opening Prayer, Scriptures, Literary Readings (both contemporary and older), personal prayer and reflections, including a closing prayer at the end.  Beginning on Ash Wednesday and concluding in Eastertide Week 7, the collection spans a broad range of themes from repentance to consolation and deliverance.  The entries are rich with interesting stories and beautiful poems, that each reader is sure to find something that catches their spirit.  In the first entry on Ash Wednesday, included is Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story called the The Minister’s Black Veil in which Reverend Mr. Hooper came to the pulpit one Sunday wearing a black veil.  The crowd bemused that he had gone mad or weren’t even sure it w

Still Pilgrim: Poems by Angela Alaimo O’Donnell There is a kind of distance that you often gauge when I read poetry, the feeling that you’d like to experience what the poet describes but you don’t know if you ever will.  Descriptions sometimes fall by the way because they are either too elevated in nature or too base in feeling, the way a movie can bring together both elements.  Yet, in certain cases, poems hit one squarely in the heart, because the experiences land so universally and the emotions too real to forget.  Angela Alaimo O’Donnell’s new collection of poems, Still Pilgrim , captures both the events of every life and the feelings that flow from them in a beautiful and captivating way. In the Still Pilgrim Sings to Her Child Angela pens; But you are you, my mystery, my gray-eyed boy, my history Embedded in your body made of love. This the moment I still dream of. Though twenty years have come and gone I sing to you, and you’re my song. The

The Spirituality of Paul by Leslie T. Hardin Robust and dense argumentation, heavy theological jargon, and weighty social issues, are a few of the things that come to mind when we think of the apostle Paul.  Yet, key to his development as a follower of Christ is his life in the Spirit, his spiritual life.  Professor Leslie T. Hardin steps in with a book entitled The Spirituality of Paul: Partnering with the Spirit in Everyday Life, a work focused on the prayer, proclamation, and worship of Paul given to Christ.  Leslie explores the context of prayer in the life of Paul by looking at his writings.  In the writings of Paul, Leslie finds an enormous freedom in prayer that also looks at the kind of prayer that Paul called others to carry out.  He writes, “Paul will not prayer degenerate into simple asking, though, as if God were a spiritual vending machine.  The language of “thanksgiving” is the most frequent of all the prayer vocabulary in Paul’s epistles. (47)