Download or read book Secrets of a Nun written by Elizabeth Upton and published by Twin Star, Santa Barbara Press. This book was released on 2002-11 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A journey of innocence, passion and miracles where Elizabeth as Sister Roseann is called to come to grips with her faith, her emotional needs and her forbidden loves.
Download or read book Sin Shame Secrets written by David Yonke and published by David Yonke. This book was released on 2015-02-06 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this unique and compelling true-crime story, journalist and author David Yonke presents and analyzes the only case in U.S. history in which a Roman Catholic priest was arrested for the murder of a nun. Father Gerald Robinson of Toledo, whom friends and associates described as a timid and mild-mannered man, was arrested by cold-case detectives in April, 2004, and charged in the brutal slaying of Sister Margaret Ann Pahl 24 years earlier. The 71-year-old nun had been choked to the edge of death, covered with an altar cloth, and stabbed 31 times in the face, neck and chest. Her body was found in the sacristy of a Catholic hospital, her habit pulled up to her chest and her undergarments around her ankles. It was Holy Saturday morning, 1980, the day before Easter and the day before the victim’s 72nd birthday. Cold-case investigators said the first nine stab wounds, made over the nun’s heart, were in the shape of an upside down cross, one of many signs that Sister Margaret Ann was the victim of a ritual killing. "Sin, Shame & Secrets" unveils how cold-case investigators decided to reopen the case in 2003 after a Toledo nun testified that Father Robinson abused her in satanic rituals when she was a child. The nun's testimony before the Toledo Catholic Diocese's Review Board also alleged that a number of children had been killed by the cult. A lengthy police investigation followed, resulting in Robinson's arrest at age 66 on April 23, 2004. After a three-week trial, covered gavel-to-gavel by Court TV (now truTV), the priest was convicted of murder on May 11, 2006 and sentenced to 15 years to life in prison. * * * Yonke, the award-winning former Religion Editor and reporter at The Toledo Blade, reviewed hundreds of police files, interviewed dozens of principles, and covered every minute of the trial to give readers a thorough and examined look at events as they unfolded, as well as providing background information for the story and the people involved. * * * In Robinson’s legal appeals, the killer priest claimed that his trial attorneys failed to examine the possibility that another hospital chaplain — one with a drinking problem, a bad temper, and a knife collection — may have been the real murderer. Robinson also alleged that Coral Eugene Watts, a confessed serial killer who strangled and stabbed up to 80 women, was living an hour north of Toledo in 1980 and may have been the perpetrator. The story has been covered by news media around the world and featured on many nationally broadcast television programs. Although Robinson's appeals were denied by the Ohio Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court, public debate and controversy continue to swirl in this timeless and shocking case. * * * Nancy Grace, talk show host former prosecutor: "Carefully detailing her murder, Yonke describes not only the search for a killer, but the struggle for all of us including both the Toledo police and the Catholic Church, to accept that evil exists everywhere around us, even within the house of God." Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Sallah called it "a murder case for the ages," adding that "Yonke deftly shows how an American Catholic diocese kept one of its own from being charged for more than a quarter century." Father Thomas Doyle, JCD, CADC, commented: "This is not just another murder mystery. It is a true story that enrages, mystifies and terrifies any reader with even a modicum of moral awareness." Barbara Blaine, founder of SNAP, said: "Through painstaking research and gripping narrative, David Yonke presents and analyzes a stunning case of physical, emotional, and sexual pain and the political corruption that kept a horrific crime unsolved for years." Pulitzer Prize-winner Mitch Weiss called it "an explosive piece of investigative journalism."
Download or read book Isadore s Secret written by Mardi Link and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2010-04-23 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In Isadore's Secret, Mardi Link shines a journalist's lamp on this dark, quiet corner of Michigan's history, assuring that the tragic story of Sister Janina is not forgotten. Link's telling is fascinating and thorough, making a story you will not soon forget." ---Steve Lehto, author of Death's Door A gripping account of the mysterious 1907 disappearance of a young nun in a northern Michigan town and the national controversy that followed when she turned up dead and buried in the basement of her own church. Swinging planks of lantern light shine through the musty air and onto the dirt floor of the church basement. The oddly glowing rectangles syncopate over the damp ground and illuminate even the darkest, stooped-down corners of the space beyond. The only sound is the ragged breathing of two men, a young parish priest and a much older laborer. Aboveground these men belong completely to this place, in both body and soul. A glimpse of their faces anywhere in the sanctuary, the rectory, the school, the barn, or the gardens would be a welcome sight. But here below, these men of Isadore are interlopers. Only trespassers would sneak silently into the church's sloped underbelly without witness to carry out such a sinful and secret errand as this one. Despite their tools, and their lantern, and their resolve, neither is equipped for the task at hand or for what is to come. Mardi Link, a former crime reporter, was named Antioch's Betty Crumrine Scholar for Creative Nonfiction in 2007. Her first book, When Evil Came to Good Hart, also published by the University of Michigan Press, spent four months on the Heartland Indie Bestseller List. This true story was the basis for the Broadway play The Runner Stumbles and the film of the same name. Front cover: Photograph of cemetery © John L. Russell, Great Lakes Images; image of face ©iStockphoto.com/duncan1890.
Download or read book The Secret Diamond Sisters written by Michelle Madow and published by Harlequin. This book was released on 2014-03-01 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Savannah. Courtney. Peyton. The three sisters grew up not knowing their father and not quite catching a break. But it looks like their luck is about to change when they find out the secret identity of their long-lost dad—a billionaire Las Vegas hotel owner who wants them to come live in a gorgeous penthouse hotel suite. Suddenly the Strip's most exclusive clubs are all-access, and with an unlimited credit card each, it should be easier than ever to fit right in. But in a town full of secrets and illusion, fitting in is nothing compared to finding out the truth about their past.
Download or read book Awful Disclosures written by Maria Monk and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-09-12 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Awful Disclosures A Nun's Life in a Convent Exposed By Maria Monk Maria Monk was a Canadian woman whose book Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, or, The Hidden Secrets of a Nun's Life in a Convent Exposed (1836) claimed to expose systematic sexual abuse of nuns and infanticide of the resulting children by Catholic priests in her convent in Montreal. The book became a best-seller.
Download or read book The Third Sister written by Sara Blaedel and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2020-04-07 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Family drama, deadly secrets, and deception come to a head in the explosive conclusion of #1 internationally bestselling author Sara Blaedel's Family Secrets trilogy. Ilka Jensen's life is in chaos following the tumultuous events of Her Father's Secret. The funeral home she inherited after her estranged father's death is bankrupt. Her new business partner, Artie, lies unconscious in the hospital after a savage attack by mysterious assailants, and her father's second wife is in prison. Then, just as Ilka learns a shocking revelation about her father, two menacing strangers turn up at the funeral home—dangerous men who mean to draw her further into a world of secrets, betrayal, and murder. In order to protect herself and those around her, Ilka sets off on a twisting journey to confront the truth about the man who abandoned her as a child. But the long-buried secrets of her father's past are more tangled and perilous than Ilka could ever imagine . . .
Download or read book Another Nun s Story written by Beth Warren and published by WestBow Press. This book was released on 2021-05-12 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1947, author Beth Warren, entered the convent because she believed God called her to a special life of service for His people. She had a passionate love for nuns who combined their religious lives with outgoing compassion for others. Warren wanted to be just like them. She dreamed that answering her Call to religious life would help make the world a better place. During the sixties, Pope John XXIII asked nuns to look outside their convent walls to see where they were most needed. Warren was drawn to working with disadvantaged people, but she was told she was a teacher, not a social worker. She realized that to serve God’s deprived people and live among them, she would need to leave her religious Community. In Another Nun’s Story, Warren chronicles her joys and difficulties during her religious life from the 1940s to the 1980s. She discusses how being a rebel nun led her to break her vows and left her with unraveled feelings and some guilt. But she came to understand she was saying goodbye to an impossible dream so she could pursue one that was possible for her.
Download or read book The Birth of Venus written by Sarah Dunant and published by Random House. This book was released on 2004-11-30 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alessandra Cecchi is not quite fifteen when her father, a prosperous cloth merchant, brings a young painter back from northern Europe to decorate the chapel walls in the family’s Florentine palazzo. A child of the Renaissance, with a precocious mind and a talent for drawing, Alessandra is intoxicated by the painter’s abilities. But their burgeoning relationship is interrupted when Alessandra’s parents arrange her marriage to a wealthy, much older man. Meanwhile, Florence is changing, increasingly subject to the growing suppression imposed by the fundamentalist monk Savonarola, who is seizing religious and political control. Alessandra and her native city are caught between the Medici state, with its love of luxury, learning, and dazzling art, and the hellfire preaching and increasing violence of Savonarola’s reactionary followers. Played out against this turbulent backdrop, Alessandra’s married life is a misery, except for the surprising freedom it allows her to pursue her powerful attraction to the young painter and his art. The Birth of Venus is a tour de force, the first historical novel from one of Britain’s most innovative writers of literary suspense. It brings alive the history of Florence at its most dramatic period, telling a compulsively absorbing story of love, art, religion, and power through the passionate voice of Alessandra, a heroine with the same vibrancy of spirit as her beloved city.
Download or read book Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk written by Maria Monk and published by . This book was released on 1836 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Sacrament written by Olaf Olafsson and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2019-12-03 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The haunting, vivid story of a nun whose past returns to her in unexpected ways, all while investigating a mysterious death and a series of harrowing abuse claims A young nun is sent by the Vatican to investigate allegations of misconduct at a Catholic school in Iceland. During her time there, on a gray winter’s day, a young student at the school watches the school’s headmaster, Father August Franz, fall to his death from the church tower. Two decades later, the child—now a grown man, haunted by the past—calls the nun back to the scene of the crime. Seeking peace and calm in her twilight years at a convent in France, she has no choice to make a trip to Iceland again, a trip that brings her former visit, as well as her years as a young woman in Paris, powerfully and sometimes painfully to life. In Paris, she met an Icelandic girl who she has not seen since, but whose acquaintance changed her life, a relationship she relives all while reckoning with the mystery of August Franz’s death and the abuses of power that may have brought it on. In The Sacrament, critically acclaimed novelist Olaf Olafsson looks deeply at the complexity of our past lives and selves; the faulty nature of memory; and the indelible mark left by the joys and traumas of youth. Affecting and beautifully observed, The Sacrament is both propulsively told and poignantly written—tinged with the tragedy of life’s regrets but also moved by the possibilities of redemption, a new work from a novelist who consistently surprises and challenges.
Download or read book Awful Disclosures written by Maria Monk and published by New-York : M. Monk. This book was released on 1836 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book In This House of Brede written by Rumer Godden and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2016-12-13 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following World War II, a British widow joins a Benedictine monastery in this poignant New York Times bestseller from the author of Black Narcissus. For most of her adult life, Philippa Talbot has been a successful British professional. Now in her forties, the World War II–widow has made a startling decision: She’s giving up her civil service career and elite social standing to join a convent as a postulant Roman Catholic nun. In Sussex in the south of England, Philippa begins her new life inside Brede Abbey, a venerable, 130-year-old Benedictine monastery. Taking her place among a diverse group of extraordinary women, young and old, she is welcomed into the surprisingly rich and complex world of the devout, whom faith, fate, and circumstance have led there. From their personal stories, both uplifting and heartbreaking, Philippa draws great strength in the weeks, months, and years that follow, as the confidence, conflicts, and poignant humanity of her fellow sisters serve to validate her love and sacred purpose. But a time of great upheaval in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church approaches as the winds of change blow at gale force. And for the financially troubled Brede and the acolytes within, it will take no less than a miracle to weather the storm. Author Rumer Godden spent three years living in close proximity to Stanbrook Abbey in Worcestershire communing with the Benedictine nuns in preparation for the writing of this beloved bestseller. The result is an honest and unforgettable novel of love, sacrifice, and devotion, a major literary achievement from the acclaimed author of Black Narcissus and The River. This ebook features an illustrated biography of the author including rare images from the Rumer Godden Literary Estate.
Download or read book If Nuns Ruled the World written by Jo Piazza and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2014-09-02 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Fascinating profiles” of remarkable nuns, from an eighty-three-year-old Ironman champion to a crusader against human trafficking (Daily News [New York]). “In an age of villainy, war and inequality, it makes sense that we need superheroes,” writes Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times. “And after trying Superman, Batman and Spider-Man, we may have found the best superheroes yet: Nuns.” In If Nuns Ruled the World, veteran reporter Jo Piazza overthrows the popular perception of nuns as killjoy schoolmarms, instead revealing them as the most vigorous catalysts of change in an otherwise repressive society. Meet Sister Simone Campbell, who traversed the United States challenging a Congressional budget that threatened to severely undermine the well-being of poor Americans; Sister Megan Rice, who is willing to spend the rest of her life in prison if it helps eliminate nuclear weapons; and the inimitable Sister Jeannine Gramick, who is fighting for acceptance of gays and lesbians in the Catholic Church. During a time when American nuns are often under attack from the very institution to which they devote their lives—and the values of the institution itself are hotly debated—these sisters offer thought-provoking and inspiring stories. As the Daily Beast put it, “Anybody looking to argue there is a place for Catholicism in the modern world should just stand on a street corner handing out Piazza’s book.”
Download or read book The Nuns of Sant Ambrogio written by Hubert Wolf and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2015-01-13 with total page 557 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A true, never-before-told story—discovered in a secret Vatican archive—of sex, poison, and lesbian initiation rites in a nineteenth-century convent. In 1858, a German princess, recently inducted into the convent of Sant’Ambrogio in Rome, wrote a frantic letter to her cousin, a confidant of the Pope, claiming that she was being abused and feared for her life. What the subsequent investigation by the Church’s Inquisition uncovered were the extraordinary secrets of Sant’Ambrogio and the illicit behavior of the convent’s beautiful young mistress, Maria Luisa. Having convinced those under her charge that she was having regular visions and heavenly visitations, Maria Luisa began to lead and coerce her novices into lesbian initiation rites and heresies. She entered into a highly eroticized relationship with a young theologian known as Padre Peters—urging him to dispense upon her, in the privacy and sanctity of the confessional box, what the two of them referred to as the “special blessing.” What emerges through the fog of centuries is a sex scandal of ecclesiastical significance, skillfully brought to light and vividly reconstructed in scholarly detail. Offering a broad historical background on female mystics and the cult of the Virgin Mary, and drawing on written testimony and original documents, Professor Wolf—Germany’s leading scholar of the Catholic Church, and among the very first scholars to be granted access to the archives of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly the office of the Inquisition—tells the incredible story of how one woman was able to perpetrate deception, heresy, seduction, and murder in the heart of the Church itself.
Download or read book Unveiled written by Cheryl L. Reed and published by Berkley Publishing Group. This book was released on 2005 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do nuns really think about life, death, love, sex, faith, friendship, guilt, regret, loss, motherhood, feminism, and the modern world and all its conveniences and luxuries? A candid, fascinating, and revealing look at life in (and out of) the convent--by an award-winning investigative journalist.
Download or read book Witches of America written by Alex Mar and published by Sarah Crichton Books. This book was released on 2015-10-20 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Witches are gathering." When most people hear the word "witches," they think of horror films and Halloween, but to the nearly one million Americans who practice Paganism today, witchcraft is a nature-worshipping, polytheistic, and very real religion. So Alex Mar discovers when she sets out to film a documentary and finds herself drawn deep into the world of present-day magic. Witches of America follows Mar on her immersive five-year trip into the occult, charting modern Paganism from its roots in 1950s England to its current American mecca in the San Francisco Bay Area; from a gathering of more than a thousand witches in the Illinois woods to the New Orleans branch of one of the world's most influential magical societies. Along the way she takes part in dozens of rituals and becomes involved with a wild array of characters: a government employee who founds a California priesthood dedicated to a Celtic goddess of war; American disciples of Aleister Crowley, whose elaborate ceremonies turn the Catholic mass on its head; second-wave feminist Wiccans who practice a radical separatist witchcraft; a growing "mystery cult" whose initiates trace their rites back to a blind shaman in rural Oregon. This sprawling magical community compels Mar to confront what she believes is possible-or hopes might be. With keen intelligence and wit, Mar illuminates the world of witchcraft while grappling in fresh and unexpected ways with the question underlying every faith: Why do we choose to believe in anything at all? Whether evangelical Christian, Pagan priestess, or atheist, each of us craves a system of meaning to give structure to our lives. Sometimes we just find it in unexpected places.
Download or read book Aging with Grace written by David Snowdon and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2008-11-19 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1986 Dr. David Snowdon, one of the world’s leading experts on Alzheimer’s disease, embarked on a revolutionary scientific study that would forever change the way we view aging—and ultimately living. Dubbed the “Nun Study” because it involves a unique population of 678 Catholic sisters, this remarkable long-term research project has made headlines worldwide with its provocative discoveries. Yet Aging with Grace is more than a groundbreaking health and science book. It is the inspiring human story of these remarkable women—ranging in age from 74 to 106—whose dedication to serving others may help all of us live longer and healthier lives. Totally accessible, with fascinating portraits of the nuns and the scientists who study them, Aging with Grace also offers a wealth of practical findings: • Why building linguistic ability in childhood may protect against Alzheimer’s • Which ordinary foods promote longevity and healthy brain function • Why preventing strokes and depression is key to avoiding Alzheimer’s • What role heredity plays, and why it’s never too late to start an exercise program • How attitude, faith, and community can add years to our lives A prescription for hope, Aging with Grace shows that old age doesn’t have to mean an inevitable slide into illness and disability; rather it can be a time of promise and productivity, intellectual and spiritual vigor—a time of true grace.
