When most think of Tolstoy they think of the great author. War and Peace and Anna Karenina brought him worldwide fame and a good deal of money. Had he done nothing else in life these two novels would have ensured him status and respect. Few others had written both a national epic and a great love story; and some might have been content with that. For his last thirty years however Tolstoy walked a different track. After his spiritual crisis when he was 50 he exchanged his authors clothes fo...

Abbot Peter has recently swapped his failing leadership of a remote monastery in the Sinai desert for retirement in the bleak and stormy English seaside town of Stormhaven. When the charismatic local vicar is discovered dead – crucified, naked, to a cross on the vestry wall – Abbot Peter is invited to act as a Special Witness investigator.He is assigned to work alongside Detective Inspector Tamsin Shah – young, pretty, brash, unsentimental and, by a peculiar quirk of fate, a niece ...

Wreckers sinks the old narratives of imperialism, revealing the violent, chaotic and improvised reality of empire-building from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries.'Clever and compelling book. The storytelling and the scholarship fairly spark off each other. It could be a model for how academics should write history for a general audience' The Times‘A flowing, gripping narrative, Wreckers is distinguished by en...

When the curtains of the Bell Theatre open for the second half of Mother’s Day, a new play commissioned for the venue’s thirtieth anniversary, the lifeless body of theatre director Hermione Bysshe-Urquhart MBE is revealed. Within the startled audience sit retired monk Abbot Peter and his guest for the evening, Detective Inspector Tamsin Shah. Tamsin and Peter undertake a new murder investigation among the cast and crew of the theatre, a struggling pro-am business operating from a converted...

Times have changed since John Bunyan wrote his classic Pilgrim’s Progress, telling of Pilgrim’s journey up Hill Difficult and through the Slough of Despond to the Celestial City. Yet people in their millions still seek meaning in their lives and speak of journeying towards a goal. Everyone on earth seeks a heaven. This is the story of the journey of Pippa, a 21st-century Pilgrim. Simon Parke’s witty and insightful modern-day re-telling of Pilgrim’s Progress follows the original’s premise o...

Who was Jesus of Nazareth? Many admire his spiritual teachings; some go further and claim him as the messiah while a few deny he ever existed at all. But everyone has an opinion about this obscure preacher who lived his brief life in one of the less significant regions of the Roman Empire; and who in being crucified died the traditional death for criminals and trouble-makers. Jesus lived in turbulent times. Under Roman rule Judea was a hotbed of nationalist political and religious interest...

The day I was appointed Chair of the shop union was the same day the Pope was elected. There the similarities end, however. For while his elevation took place beneath the fine art of the Sistine Chapel, with the mysterious white smoke rising, mine took place in the cold store, with nothing more mysterious than the bacon delivery and yesterday's waste...A vicar for twenty years, Simon Parke trades in his dog collar for a job on the tills in his local supermarket. Among the ...

This book offers ten new commandments for coping with the stresses, strains and pressures of modern life. These ten new commandments are ten skilful attitudes for the attainment of your true self.Be presentObserve yourselfBe nothingFlee attachmentTranscend sufferingDrop your illusionsPrepare for truthCease separationKnow your soulFear nothingThis handbook will set you on t...

‘Although seven clowns started the evening alive, only six still breathed by the evening’s end. And while everyone saw the murderer and knew the murderer, no one knew their name.’Henry House, an Elizabethan manor, is now occupied by Mind Gains, a new therapy centre in Stormhaven. But a Halloween party for staff and clients ends in gruesome and bloody murder. Once again, retired monk Abbot Peter and his niece Detective Inspector Tamsin Shah are called upon to solve the mystery....

‘Excellence by the Sea’ is the strap line in Stormhaven Towers school’s publicity, but when, at the end of the summer term, the hard-drinking, hard-smoking new Headmaster, Jamie King, is found dead at the bottom of the town’s famous white cliffs, this excellence comes under savage scrutiny. Suicide is assumed at first - King wouldn’t be the first tormented soul to hit those unforgiving rocks. But unanswered questions remain. Forensics find no phone by the body and the head always ...

What does solitude mean to you? Albert Einstein once said: I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.In his latest book Simon Parke, author of The Beautiful Life and One-Minute Mindfulness describes solitude as the active path to inner silence and takes us on an enthralling journey there. In a world of haste and ...

We all grow up somewhere. No two families are the same, but everyone experiences them in some way. What everyone doesn't do, however, is consider the effect of these experiences on the person they become. This lack of awareness can have significant consequences in their future relationships in the world.Forsaking the family, full of story and illustration, starts by considering the surprising approach of Jesus to his own family in turns, rude, dismissve and warm. His family values wou...