In This House Of Brede

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.

Illustrates the intense fight of an innocent man trying to clear his name after being branded a child molester.

From a New York Times–bestselling author: A novel of a woman’s journey from prostitute to brothel madam to murderess to nun in post–World War II France. A sense of adventure and an eagerness to savor life to the fullest impel young, orphaned Elizabeth Fanshawe to escape her cold, unloving home and enlist in the British Army as a driver in 1944. Dispatched to Paris at the close of the Allies’ war against the hated Nazis, she soon finds herself swept up in the intoxicating celebratory glee of the newly liberated French. But after she meets the charming, seductive Patrice Ambard, Elizabeth’s life takes a sharp turn down a very dark road. Her love for the dashing, hypnotic Frenchman draws Elizabeth, now called Lise, into Patrice’s world of crime and high-class prostitution, where she is broken, hardened, and then transformed into the whore-turned-notorious-madam known as La Balafrée, or the Scarred One. Still, her great fall will not be complete until circumstances drive her to commit a shocking murder—and imprisonment ultimately sets her free. A haunting tale of disgrace, degradation, and glorious redemption told in flashbacks from the convent of Belle Source, where Soeur Marie Lise of the Sisters of Bethany remembers her years of sin and her eventual salvation, Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy is moving and powerful fiction from one of the most admired British novelists of the twentieth century. Rumer Godden, author of Black Narcissus and In This House of Brede, has crafted a truly transformative tale about faith, forgiveness, and the mercy of a loving God. This ebook features an illustrated biography of the author including rare images from the Rumer Godden Literary Estate.

Ingrid Bergman's engaging screen performance as Sister Mary Benedict in The Bells of St. Mary's made the film nun a star and her character a shining standard of comparison. She represented the religious life as the happy and rewarding choice of a modern woman who had a "complete understanding" of both erotic and spiritual desire. How did this vibrant and mature nun figure come to be viewed as girlish and naive? Why have she and her cinematic sisters in postwar popular film so often been stereotyped or selectively analyzed, so seldom been seen as women and religious? In Veiled Desires--a unique full-length, in-depth study of nuns in film--Maureen Sabine explores these questions in a groundbreaking interdisciplinary study covering more than sixty years of cinema. She looks at an impressive breadth of films in which the nun features as an ardent lead character, including The Bells of St. Mary's (1945), Black Narcissus (1947), Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957), Sea Wife (1957), The Nun's Story (1959), The Sound of Music (1965), Change of Habit (1969), In This House of Brede (1975), Agnes of God (1985), Dead Man Walking (1995), and Doubt (2008). Veiled Desires considers how the beautiful and charismatic stars who play chaste nuns, from Ingrid Bergman and Audrey Hepburn to Susan Sarandon and Meryl Streep, call attention to desires that the veil concealed and the habit was thought to stifle. In a theologically and psychoanalytically informed argument, Sabine responds to the critics who have pigeonholed the film nun as the obedient daughter and religious handmaiden of a patriarchal church, and the respectful audience who revered her as an icon of spiritual perfection. She provides a framework for a more complex and holistic picture of nuns on screen by showing how the films dramatize these women's Christian call to serve, sacrifice, and dedicate themselves to God, and their erotic desire for intimacy, agency, achievement, and fulfillment.

From the New York Times–bestselling author of The Greengage Summer: Two English sisters’ lives are transformed when their father brings them to India. At fifteen and twelve, the daughters of Sir Edward Gwithiam of the diplomatic service have already seen more of the world than most children their age. But when Una and her younger sister, Halcyon, are summoned from their English boarding school to join their father in New Delhi, they encounter a reality unlike anything they have ever experienced. For Hal, India is a glorious adventure, filled with exotic sights and sounds, and a host of interesting new people. But Una feels like an outsider in this world of ingrained racial prejudice and cultural elitism left over from the days of the British Raj. Though no longer a child, she is expected to submit to the will of a Eurasian governess, the calculating and beautiful Alix Lamont, whose relationship with the girls’ father appears more intimate and troubling than merely employee–employer. Then Ravi, a young Indian gardener, brings a welcome light into Una’s life, relieving her sadness and loneliness with poetry and compassion. But what begins as a simple friendship soon blossoms into a love forbidden by society, threatening to end in scandal and disaster. Based in part on Rumer Godden’s personal experiences and informed by her love of the Indian continent, where she spent the better part of her early life, The Peacock Spring is a beautiful and heartbreaking novel of loss of innocence and coming-of-age 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.

By the author of Black Narcissus and The River 'Rumer Godden's novels have a timeless shimmer' GUARDIAN 'One hundred years after her birth, Rumer Godden's novels still pulse with life' MATTHEW DENNISON, TELEGRAPH 'Her craftsmanship is always sure' NEW YORK TIMES 'The motto was Pax but the word was set in a circle of thorns. Peace, but what a strange peace, made of unremitting toil and effort . . .' Bruised by tragedy, Philippa Talbot leaves behind a successful career with the civil service for a new calling: to join an enclosed order of Benedictine nuns. In this small community of fewer than one hundred women, she soon discovers all the human frailties: jealousy, love, despair. But each crisis of heart and conscience is guided by the compassion and intelligence of the Abbess and by the Sisters' shared bond of faith and ritual. Away from the world, and yet at one with it, Philippa must learn to forgive and forget her past . . .

Pax is the motto of Brede Abbey. Yet its peace is the peace of God—“not,” as Godden brings to her readers’ notice, “the world’s peace.” The walls of Brede witness life of unceasing work and prayer, little creature comfort, persistent disappointment and misunderstanding—yet a life of peace all the same, unswervingly joyful and loving. Into this life enters Philippa Talbot, ambitious, independent, successful, forsaking her beautifully arranged career in the world for a vocation of complete self-gift to God. Over the years and through myriad relationships in Brede and beyond, Philippa’s spirit is tested and her mission refined, to the point of becoming “not what thou art, nor what thou hast been, beholdeth God with His merciful eyes, but what thou wouldst be.” A milestone in Catholic literature, In This House of Brede is fiction of the highest caliber: no saccharine, simpering imitation of life, but a wholehearted, unreserved reflection of reality in its awful fullness. --