Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

An ancient secret brotherhood. A devastating new weapon of destruction. An unthinkable target. World-renowned Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to a Swiss research facility to analyze a cryptic symbol seared into the chest of a murdered physicist. What he discovers is unimaginable: a deadly vendetta against the Catholic Church by a centuries-old underground organization -- the Illuminati.... (more)

Robert Langdon: Book 2

The Da Vinci Code

by Dan Brown

An ingenious code hidden in the works of Leonardo da Vinci. A desperate race through the cathedrals and castles of Europe. An astonishing truth concealed for centuries . . . unveiled at last. As millions of readers around the globe have already discovered, The Da Vinci Code is a reading experience unlike any other. Simultaneously lightning-paced, intelligent, and intricately layered with remarkable... (more)

The Da Vinci Code

by Dan Brown

While in Paris on business, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon receives an urgent late-night phone call: the elderly curator of the Louvre has been murdered inside the museum. Near the body, police have found a baffling cipher. While working to solve the enigmatic riddle, Langdon is stunned to discover it leads to a trail of clues hidden in the works of Da Vinci -- clues visible for all to see -- yet ingeniously... (more)

The Third Secret

by Steve Berry

Explosive in both its pace and its revelations, The Third Secret is a remarkable international thriller. Bestselling author Steve Berry tackles some of the most controversial ideas of our time in a breakneck journey through the history of the Church and the future of religion. Fatima, Portugal, 1917: The Virgin Mary appears to three peasant children, sharing with them three secrets, two of which are soon revealed... (more)

Holy Blood, Holy Grail

The Secret History of Jesus, the Shocking Legacy of the Grail

by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, Henry Lincoln

Is the traditional, accepted view of the life of Christ in some way incomplete? • Is it possible Christ did not die on the cross? • Is it possible Jesus was married, a father, and that his bloodline still exists? • Is it possible that parchments found in the South of France a century ago reveal one of the best-kept secrets of Christendom? • Is it possible that these parchments contain the very heart of the... (more)

The Tudors: Book 1

The Constant Princess

by Philippa Gregory

"I am Catalina, Princess of Spain, daughter of the two greatest monarchs the world has ever known...and I will be Queen of England." Thus, bestselling author Philippa Gregory introduces one of her most unforgettable heroines: Katherine of Aragon. Known to history as the Queen who was pushed off her throne by Anne Boleyn, here is a Katherine the world has forgotten: the enchanting princess that all England loved.... (more)

Purple Hibiscus: A Novel

by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

A haunting tale of an Africa and an adolescence undergoing tremendous changes by a talented young Nigerian writer. Fifteen-year-old Kambili's world is circumscribed by the high walls of her family compound and the frangipani trees she can see from her bedroom window. Her wealthy Catholic father, although generous and well-respected in the community, is repressive and fanatically religious at home. Her life is... (more)

Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession

Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession

by Anne Rice

In 2005, Anne Rice startled her readers with her novel Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt , and by revealing that, after years as an atheist, she had returned to her Catholic faith. Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana followed. And now, in her powerful and haunting memoir, Rice tells the story of the spiritual transformation that produced a complete change in her literary goals. She begins with her girlhood in New... (more)

Hitler's Pope

by John Cornwell

Backed by a wealth of new research, John Cornwell tells for the first time the story of the World War II career of Eugenio Pacelli, the man who was Pope Pius XII, arguably the most dangerous churchman in modern history. In the first decade of the century, as a brilliant young Vatican lawyer, Pacelli helped shape a new ideology of unprecedented papal power in Germany. In 1933 Hitler became his negotiating partner,... (more)

Stained (Richard Jackson Books (Simon Pulse))

Stained (Richard Jackson Books (Simon Pulse))

by Jennifer Jacobson

This work talks about a mysterious - or malevolent - force in a small town. Jocelyn has two boys in her life. And a priest. Gabe has shared fourteen years of growing up next door. He's "a golden boy, an all-star". Yet now, in the spring of 1975, he's missing, disappeared on the brink of senior year at Weaver High. The whole town is set to go searching for him. Benny has been in New Hampshire only since January.... (more)

Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews -- A History

Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews -- A History

by James Carroll

In this "rare book that combines searing passion . . . with a subject that has affected all of our lives" (Chicago Tribune), the novelist and cultural critic James Carroll maps the two-thousand-year course of the Church"s battle against Judaism and faces the crisis of faith it has sparked in his own life as a Catholic. "Fascinating, brave and sometimes infuriating" (Time), this dark history is more than a... (more)

The Mercy Seller

by Brenda Rickman Vantrease

In the fifteenth century, with religious intolerance spreading like wildfire across Europe, English-born Anna Bookman and her grandfather, Finn, earn a living in Prague by illuminating precious books, including forbidden translations of the Bible. Finn subscribes to the heresy that people ought to be able to read the Word of God for themselves, without having to pay a priest for the privilege, but holding that... (more)

The Testament

by Eric Lustbader

For centuries, a secret splinter sect of the Franciscans, the Gnostic Observatines, has guarded secrets that could transform the world. Now the safety of those secrets depends on one man--and a woman he barely knows. Braverman “Bravo” Shaw always knew his father had secrets. But not until Dexter Shaw dies mysteriously does Bravo discover the enormity of his father’s hidden life as a high-ranking member of the... (more)

The Jesus Papers: Exposing the Greatest Cover-Up in History

The Jesus Papers: Exposing the Greatest Cover-Up in History

by Michael Baigent

What if everything we have been told about the origins of Christianity is a lie? What if a small group had always known the truth and had kept it hidden . . . until now? What if there is evidence that Jesus Christ survived the crucifixion? In Holy Blood, Holy Grail Michael Baigent and his co-authors Henry Lincoln and Richard Leigh stunned the world with a controversial theory that Jesus Christ and... (more)

The DaVinci CodeDan Brown

The DaVinci Code

by Dan Brown

Anjos e Demônios - A Primeira Aventura de Robert Langdon

Anjos e Demônios - A Primeira Aventura de Robert Langdon

Joan: The Mysterious Life of the Heretic Who Became a Saint

Joan: The Mysterious Life of the Heretic Who Became a Saint

by Donald Spoto

During the tumultuous Hundred Years' War between England and France, a teenage peasant girl followed her heart and helped save a nation. A vision from God, received in her parents' garden, instructed her to take up arms and help restore the kingdom of France. Without consulting her family, Joan left home on one of the most remarkable personal quests in history. As a young girl in a world of men, she faced... (more)

God's Spy

by Juan Go?mez-Jurado

An instant bestseller in Spain, with rights sold in twenty-eight countries and counting, God’s Spy is a spectacular contemporary thriller set in the Vatican, where, in the aftermath of Pope John Paul II’s death, the hunt for a serial killer reveals a chilling conspiracy. In the days following the Pope’s death, a cardinal is found brutally murdered in a chapel in Rome, his eyes gouged and his hands cut... (more)

Any Bitter Thing: A Novel

by Monica Wood

After surviving a near-fatal accident, thirty-year-old Lizzy Mitchell faces a long road to recovery. She remembers little about the days she spent in and out of consciousness, save for one thing: She saw her beloved deceased uncle, Father Mike, the man who raised her in the rectory of his Maine church until she was nine, at which time she was abruptly sent away to boarding school. Was Father Mike an angel, a... (more)

The Witch's Trinity: A Novel

by Erika Mailman

The year is 1507, and a friar has arrived in Tierkinddorf, a remote German village nestled deeply in the woods. The village has been suffering a famine, and the villagers are desperately hungry. The friar’s arrival is a miracle, and when he claims he can restore the town to prosperity, the men and women gathered to hear him rejoice. The friar has a book called the Malleus Maleficarum—“The Witch’s Hammer”—a guide... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: catholic church

by Dan Brown

by Dan Brown

by Dan Brown

by Steve Berry

The Secret History of Jesus, the Shocking Legacy of the Grail

by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, Henry Lincoln

by Philippa Gregory

by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

by Anne Rice

by John Cornwell

by Jennifer Jacobson

by James Carroll

by Brenda Rickman Vantrease

by Eric Lustbader

by Michael Baigent

by Dan Brown

by Donald Spoto

by Juan Go?mez-Jurado

by Monica Wood

by Erika Mailman