Night Pilgrims

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's first Saint-Germain novel, Hotel Transylvania, was recently nominated as Vampire Novel of the Century. Her Saint-Germain cycle, now comprised of more than twenty-five books, is a masterwork of historical horror fiction. The vampire Count Saint-Germain has crisscrossed the world many times, seeking love and the blood of life and seeing humanity at its best and worst. In Night Pilgrims, Saint-Germain is living in a monastery in Egypt when he is hired to guide a group of pilgrims to underground churches in southern Egypt. The vampire finds a companion in a lovely widow who later fears that her dalliance with the Count will prevent her from reaching Heaven. The pilgrims begin to fall prey to the trials of travel in the Holy Lands; some see visions and hear the word of God; others are seduced by desires for riches and power. A visit to the Chapel of the Holy Grail brings many quarrels to a head; Saint-Germain must use all his diplomacy and a good deal of his strength to keep the pilgrims from slaughtering one another. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Robert Ward has always enjoyed travelling, especially on foot. When he discovered the ancient pilgrimage route to Santiago in Spain, he felt compelled to walk and experience this historic road. From his first journey along the Camino de Santiago, Ward fell in love with the pace, landscape, history, art, and romance of this old pilgrimage path. Above all, however, Ward fell in love with the people of the Camino – both the welcoming Spaniards and the pilgrims who come from all over the world to find out what it means to travel five hundred miles, one step at a time. In All the Good Pilgrims, Ward returns to Spain to walk the Camino for the fifth time. He thinks he knows what he’s getting into but, as his many Camino journeys have taught him, the Camino never runs out of surprises. Each day brings new lessons, friendships, questions, memories, gifts and challenges, reminding Ward that it isn’t the pilgrim who walks the Camino – it’s the Camino that walks the pilgrim. An engaging travel narrative, All the Good Pilgrims is a personal and insightful tour of the Camino de Santiago, as Ward takes readers on a secular pilgrimage in which he reflects on his past journeys and contemplates the mysterious and enduring allure of this ancient and historic road.

Religious travelers were a common sight in the Mediterranean world during Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. In fact, as Maribel Dietz finds in Wandering Monks, Virgins, and Pilgrims, this formative period in the history of Christianity witnessed an explosion of travel, as both men and women took to the roads, seeking spiritual meaning in a life of itinerancy. Much of this early Christian religious travel was not focused on a particular holy place, as in the pilgrimage of later centuries to Rome, Jerusalem, and Santiago de Compostela. Rather, the inspiration was more practical. Travel was a way of escaping hostility or social pressures or of visiting living and dead holy people. It was also a means of religious expression of homelessness and temporary exile. The wandering lifestyle mirrored an interior journey, an imitation of Christ and a commitment to the Christian ideal that an individual is only temporarily on this earth. Women were especially attracted to religious travel. In the centuries before the widespread cloistering of women, a life of itinerancy offered an alternative to marriage and a religious vocation in a society that excluded women from positions of spiritual leadership. Eventually, ascetic travel gave way to full-fledged pilgrimage. Dietz explores how and why religious travel and monasticism diverged and altered so greatly. She examines the importance of the Cluniac reform movement and the creation of the pilgrimage center of Santiago de Compostela in the emergence of a new model of religious travel: goal-centered, long-distance pilgrimage aimed not at monks but at the laity. Wandering Monks, Virgins, and Pilgrims is essential reading for those who study the history of monasticism, for it was in a monastic context that religious travel first claimed an essential place within Christianity. It will also be important for anyone interested in pilgrimage and the role of women in the history of Christianity.

Rare are works that combine personal revelations with explanations of Islam in a manner to which Westerners can easily relate. The beauty of Nicholas' Account of the Hajj (italicise) is that an Australian farm boy with an education imbued in Christian principles, and a lifetime of exposure to religions and cultures in the Arab world and South and South-East Asia, can relate to and convey in a straightforward manner Islamic beliefs and practices that many may consider foreign. Nicholas has done a great service to those interested in religions and spirituality in his descriptions of the rites of the Hajj and explanations of their origins and meaning. As a diary, the work animates the daily life of the pilgrim in an engaging style reminiscent of writings from an earlier period of exploration. Nick expresses a personal revelation, 'the Hajj inspires a deep sense of serenity, humility and affinity with the Almighty'. The Hajj is both a voyage to Mecca as well as a recommitment to a lifelong spiritual journey. He writes, 'If my Account of the Hajj can contribute to inter-cultural and religious understanding, I am happy to have shared it with others'.