I know many of you are Christian, and I wanted to pass on to you a series of books that I think you'll find fascinating. I know an old lapsed Jew/pagan like me did. <P>The author is British fiction writer Susan Howatch, who has been compared to Anthony Trollope, C.S. Lewis, and Dorothy L. Sayers. In the late 1980's and early 1990's, she underwent an Anglican conversion, and wrote six books dealing with the spiritual/personal crises of members of the Anglican clergy; all of whom are based on real people.<P>Howatch is one of the best fiction writers around. She writes literate, intelligent prose and tells a ripping yarn. The questions of spirituality and life are interesting, and one of the books actually foretells the "Clinton Rationalization" of the Lewinsky affair.<P>Amazing.<P>I highly recommend these books. Despite the content, they're quite easy to get through -- vacation reading, as it were.<P>In order, they are:<P>GLITTERING IMAGES<BR>GLAMOROUS POWERS<BR>ULTIMATE PRIZES<BR>SCANDALOUS RISKS<BR>MYSTICAL PATHS<BR>ABSOLUTE TRUTHS.<P>Happy reading! If you get into them, let me know and I'll direct you to an online book discussion.<BR>

Dazed and Condused,<BR>Thanks for the list of books, I am going out tomorrow to find them. If anything good books take me away for awhile from my own life ,which gives my mind peace! Thanks, Sheila

Just thought you folks might enjoy a few quotes, as a teaser.<P>These from SCANDALOUS RISKS, in which an Anglican clergyman has an "everything-but" affair with a woman over 30 years his junior.<P>Here, the woman is with a spiritual adviser who has also advised the man in question. She is digging for understanding about her lover, but instead, gets this:<BR>---------------------<BR>"Come along," he ordered as I hesitated. "Come here."<P>I staggered over the threashold and instantly he gripped my shoulders and spun me to face the mirror over the basin.<P>"There," he said. <I>Look</I> what he's done to you."<P>I stared into the glass. A bleary, blotched, blighted face, haggard with sleeplessness and drawn with grief, stared back. All my eye make-up had smudged. My chalk-white cheeks had a greenish tinge. Tears were everywhere."<P>{snip}<P>"And that's just the beginning," said Father Darrow. "That's just a little preview of the inexorable horrors to come."<BR>---------------------------------<BR>And this, after rumors begin flying, and the young woman has to break off the affair or risk ruining the man's ecclestiastical career, and finds herself unable to write the necessary letter:<P>"I looked like the worst kind of heroin addict, someone who could barely survive from one fix to the next."<BR>---------------------------------<BR>And this one's for all of you ladies who have received mushy letters from your OMs after doing the honorable thing, after they realize you mean business but think they can still manipulate you. This is the letter the clergyman sends. I know that at least one sometime-MB'er has received letters just like this:<P>"The time has come when I must wish you well in your new life and assure you that I will be praying hard for your happiness. I suspect you no longer believe this, but you really were the greatest prize I eve encountered, the love of my life, and now that I look back from a grey cold present into that brilliant past we shared together, I realize how very privileged I was to experience, no matter how fleetingly, such absolute perfection. I shall always cherish the memory of those walks through the woods and those kisses in the hollow -- <P><snip><P>I'll always dream of those shining hours when I loved the best girl in all the world and travelled with her through paradise."<BR>-------------------------<BR>I ask you, does this author know her stuff, or not?<P>Great, great stuff. The whole series. Read it. <P>