In this thrilling novel, Dr. Liam Kelly PhD, SJ, is a renowned scholar of Biblical history who has spent a lifetime researching pre-Christian documents in the Vatican archives. With his knowledge of a dozen ancient languages, he compiles a dossier of the secrets of the archives and uncovers startling linked secret meaning of the Pyramids Stonehenge. But he learns the story can never be told, because twisted through the threads of pagan history are other dark secrets the Church does not want to reveal. Dr. Kelly wrestles with his inner demons, torn between loyalty to his Church and the temptation of telling the truth. At risk to his personal safety, he defies Church hierarchy to find a way to reveal the old knowledge of pagan mysteries.

2018 Christy Award winner! By March of Owen Edmonds’s senior year, eleven students at Masonville High School have committed suicide. Amid the media frenzy and chaos, Owen tries to remain levelheaded—until he endures his own near-death experience and wakes to a distressing new reality. The people around him suddenly appear to be shackled and enslaved. Owen frantically seeks a cure for what he thinks are crazed hallucinations, but his delusions become even more sinister. An army of hideous, towering beings, unseen by anyone but Owen, are preying on his girlfriend and classmates, provoking them to self-destruction. Owen eventually arrives at a mind-bending conclusion: he’s not imagining the evil—everyone else is blind to its reality. He must warn and rescue those he loves . . . but this proves to be no simple mission. Will he be able to convince anyone to believe him before it’s too late? Owen’s heart-pounding journey through truth and delusion will force him to reconsider everything he believes. He both longs for and fears the answers to questions that are quickly becoming too dangerous to ignore.

This “disturbing yet fascinating” exploration of mass mania through the ages explains the biological and psychological roots of irrationality (Kirkus Reviews). From time immemorial, contagious narratives have spread through susceptible groups—with enormous, often disastrous, consequences. Inspired by Charles Mackay’s nineteenth-century classic Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, neurologist and author William Bernstein examines mass delusion through the lens of current scientific research in The Delusions of Crowds. Bernstein tells the stories of dramatic religious and financial mania in western society over the last five hundred years—from the Anabaptist Madness of the 1530s to the dangerous End-Times beliefs that pervade today’s polarized America; and from the South Sea Bubble to the Enron scandal and dot com bubbles. Through Bernstein’s supple prose, the participants are as colorful as their “desire to improve one’s well-being in this life or the next.” Bernstein’s chronicles reveal the huge cost and alarming implications of mass mania. He observes that if we can absorb the history and biology of this all-too-human phenomenon, we can recognize it more readily in our own time, and avoid its frequently dire impact.

In The Delusion of Progress Pierre-Auguste Chomat portrays a young individual who gradually becomes an unconditional believer in progress and a full member of an industrial society that sets almost no limits to its material development. The case presented by the author defines Western Society as a whole. Industrialized countries take for granted that Progress characterizes Man and is a natural movement of his being. We have faith in Progress. We do not question its values. Progress "exists" the way God "exists." We have become fundamentalists of Progress. Our societal behavior has some severe flaws. Most critically, it is exhausting the resources on which it is based and the damage that it is inflicting on Earth is often irreversible, putting life as we know it in jeopardy. The momentum that maintains our civilization is suicidal. We are on the brink of an ecosystem and economic planetary crisis never before seen in human history. Chomat thrusts upon us quintessential questions. Why, in the name of Progress, do we behave like an irresponsible species? Will we be able to exist outside our cybernetic world? Do we still know how to live in a sustainable manner? How to be a being?

"The Truman Show delusion and other strange beliefs"--Cover.