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The pope at war : the secret history of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler / by Kertzer, David I.,1948-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."When Pope Pius XII died in 1958, his papers were sealed in the Vatican Secret Archives, leaving unanswered questions about what he knew and did during World War II. Those questions have only grown and festered, making Pius XII one of the most controversial popes in Church history, especially now as the Vatican prepares to canonize him. In 2020, Pius XII's archives were finally opened, and David I. Kertzer--widely recognized as one of the world's leading Vatican scholars--has been mining this new materialever since, revealing how the pope came to set aside moral leadership in order to preserve his church's power. Based on thousands of never-before-seen documents not only from the Vatican, but from archives in Italy, Germany, France, Britain, and the United States, The Pope at War paints a new, dramatic portrait of what the pope did and did not do as war enveloped the continent and as the Nazis began their systematic mass murder of Europe's Jews. The book clears away the myths and sheer falsehoods surrounding the pope's actions from 1939 to 1945, showing why the pope repeatedly bent to the wills of Hitler and Mussolini"--
Subjects: Pius XII, Pope, 1876-1958; Pius XII, Pope, 1876-1958.; Catholic Church; Catholic Church; Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945); Judaism; National socialism and religion.; World War, 1939-1945; World War, 1939-1945; World War, 1939-1945;

All the world beside / by Conley, Garrard,author.;
Includes bibliographical references."From the New York Times bestselling author of Boy Erased, an electrifying, deeply moving novel about the love story between two men in Puritan New England. Cana, Massachusetts: a utopian vision of 18th-century Puritan New England. To the outside world, Reverend Nathaniel Whitfield and his family stand as godly pillars of their small-town community, drawing Christians from across the New World into their fold. One such Christian, physician Arthur Lyman, discovers in the minister's words a love so captivating it transcends language. As the bond between these two men grows more and more passionate, their families must contend with a tangled web of secrets, lies, and judgments which threaten to destroy them in this world and the next. And when the religious ecstasies of the Great Awakening begin to take hold, igniting a new era of zealotry, Nathaniel and Arthur search for a path out of an impossible situation, imagining a future for themselves which has no name. Their wives and children must do the same, looking beyond the known world for a new kind of wilderness, both physical and spiritual. Set during the turbulent historical upheavals which shaped America's destiny and following in the tradition of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, All the World Beside reveals the very human lives just beneath the surface of dogmatic belief. Bestselling author Garrard Conley has created a page-turning, vividly imagined historical tale that is both a love story and a crucible"--
Subjects: Gay fiction.; Queer fiction.; Historical fiction.; Novels.; Clergy; Family secrets; Gay men; Great Awakening; Physicians; Puritans;

Bryant & May. by Fowler, Christopher,author.;
"When a prominent politician is crushed by a fruit van making a delivery, the singular team of Arthur Bryant and John May overcome insurmountable odds to reunite the PCU and solve the case in the brainy new mystery from acclaimed author Christopher Fowler. On a spring morning in London's Strand, the Speaker of the House of Commons is accidentally killed by a van unloading oranges and lemons for the annual St. Clement Danes festival. It's an absurd way to die, but the government is more interested in investigating the Speaker's state of mind just prior to his accident. The task is given to the Peculiar Crimes Unit--the only problem being that the unit no longer exists. Its Chief, Raymond Land, is tending his daffodils on the Isle of Wight and senior detectives Arthur Bryant and John May are out of commission; May is undergoing surgery for a bullet wound and Bryant has been missing for a month. What's more, the old unit in King's Cross is being turned into a vegetarian tapas bar. Against impossible odds, the team is reassembled and once again what should have been a simple case becomes a lunatic farrago involving arson, suicide, magicians, academics and a race to catch a killer with a master plan involving London churches. Joining their team this time is Sidney, a young woman with no previous experience, plenty of attitude--and a surprising secret"--
Subjects: Detective and mystery fiction.; Bryant, Arthur (Fictitious character); May, John (Fictitious character); Police; Murder;

Hollywood Park : a memoir / by Jollett, Mikel,author.;
"Hollywood Park is a remarkable memoir of a tumultuous life. Mikel Jollett was born into one of the country's most infamous cults, and subjected to a childhood filled with poverty, addiction, and emotional abuse. Yet, ultimately, his is a story of fierce love and family loyalty told in a raw, poetic voice that signals the emergence of a uniquely gifted writer. We were never young. We were just too afraid of ourselves. No one told us who we were or what we were or where all our parents went. They would arrive like ghosts, visiting us for a morning, an afternoon. They would sit with us or walk around the grounds, to laugh or cry or toss us in the air while we screamed. Then they'd disappear again, for weeks, for months, for years, leaving us alone with our memories and dreams, our questions and confusion. So begins Hollywood Park, Mikel Jollett's remarkable memoir. His story opens in an experimental commune in California, which later morphed into the Church of Synanon, one of the country's most infamous and dangerous cults. Per the leader's mandate, all children, including Jollett and his older brother, were separated from their parents when they were six months old, and handed over to the cult's "School." After spending years in what was essentially an orphanage, Mikel escaped the cult one morning with his mother and older brother. But in many ways, life outside Synanon was even harder and more erratic. In his raw, poetic and powerful voice, Jollett portrays a childhood filled with abject poverty, trauma, emotional abuse, delinquency and the lure of drugs and alcohol. Raised by a clinically depressed mother, tormented by his angry older brother, subjected to the unpredictability of troubled step-fathers and longing for contact with his father, a former heroin addict and ex-con, Jollett slowly, often painfully, builds a life that leads him to Stanford University and, eventually, to finding his voice as a writer and musician. Hollywood Park is told at first through the limited perspective of a child, and then broadens as Jollett begins to understand the world around him. Although Mikel Jollett's story is filled with heartbreak, it is ultimately an unforgettable portrayal of love at its fiercest and most loyal"--
Subjects: Autobiographies.; Biographies.; Jollett, Mikel; Synanon (Foundation); Rock musicians;

Finding baby Holly : lost to a cult, surviving my parents' murders, and saved by prayer / by Miller, Holly Marie,author.; Lambert, Cindy,author.; Lambert, David,author.;
Includes bibliographical references."Holly Marie was forty-two years old the day she found out she was missing. At ten months old, Holly Marie was brought to the door of a church by three barefoot women in white robes and head coverings. Adopted by the pastor and raised in a loving Christian home, Holly nevertheless struggled with the ache of not knowing what had happened to her biological parents. She still felt their absence even as she married and started a family of her own. When two detectives showed up at the restaurant where she worked and informed her that she had a large family in Florida who had been searching for her for over 40 years, Holly's past became the reality of her present, and she began the sometimes painful journey of discovering the truth about her origins: Her parents had been brutally murdered, their case still unsolved. With the help of law enforcement across four states, forensic genealogists, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and her newly discovered family members, the missing pieces began to come together. Except these--why had her parents been murdered? And who had murdered them? She soon found out that the truth leads not always to answers but sometimes to more questions, that it also brings healing and restoration, and that we must surrender our unknowns to God until, in His perfect timing, all truths are revealed. Finding Baby Holly is the true, inspiring story of a wife and mother who was "missing" for over forty years after her parents' murders, the persistent detectives who never stopped investigating, and the birth family who never lost hope in finding her."--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Personal narratives.; Miller, Holly Marie.; Cults; Missing children; Murder;

The stars and their light : a novel / by Hawker, Olivia,author.;
It's 1947 when Sister Mary Agnes arrives in New Mexico. Her mission is to establish a monastery in the town of Roswell, where weeks before rumors of the crash landing of an unidentified craft have triggered a crisis of faith. Residents are drifting away from the divine, awed no longer by the heavens but rather the stars. In service to the frightened and confused, Sister Mary Agnes soon befriends Betty Campbell, a teenager marked both physically and psychically by the inexplicable event. Mary Agnes is also unsettlingly drawn to Harvey, an attentive handyman refurbishing the monastery--and a firsthand witness to the crash. But as Mary Agnes tries to guide her wayward friends back to the church, it's the fantastic and the forbidden that begin to loom large in her imagination. Thrown into her own crisis of doubt, Mary Agnes must choose whether to uphold the order in which she came of age or embrace the truth she feels in her heart, despite its terrifying complexity.
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Novels.; Faith; Female friendship; Interpersonal relations; Nuns; Roswell Incident, Roswell, N.M., 1947;

Philomena [videorecording] / by Clark, Sophie Kennedy.; Coogan, Steve.; Dench, Judi,1934-; Fairley, Michelle.; Frears, Stephen.; Lahbib, Simone,1965-; Sixsmith, Martin.Lost child of Philomena Lee.Videorecording.; Winningham, Mare.; BBC Films.; Entertainment One (Firm : Canada);
Judi Dench, Steve Coogan, Mare Winningham, Michaelle Fairley, Sophie Kennedy Clark, Simone Lahbib.Based on the 2009 investigative book by BBC correspondent Martin Sixsmith, The Lost Child of Philomena Lee, Philomena focuses on the efforts of Philomena Lee (Dench), mother to a boy conceived out of wedlock--something her Irish-Catholic community didn't have the highest opinion of--and given away for adoption in the United States. In following church doctrine, she was forced to sign a contract that wouldn't allow for any sort of inquiry into the son's whereabouts. After starting a family years later in England and, for the most part, moving on with her life, Lee meets Sixsmith (Coogan), a BBC reporter with whom she decides to discover her long-lost son.Canadian Home Video Rating: PG.DVD, widescreen presentation; Dolby Digital.
Subjects: Lee, Philomena; Sixsmith, Martin.; Feature films.; Illegitimate children; Journalists; Mothers and sons; Teenage mothers;
© c2014., BBC Films ; Distributed by Entertainment One,

Bloodbath nation / by Auster, Paul,1947-author.; Ostrander, Spencer,photographer.;
"Each year, approximately forty thousand Americans are killed by gunshot wounds, which is roughly equivalent to the annual rate of traffic deaths on American roads and highways. Of those forty thousand gun fatalities, more than half of them are suicides, which in turn account for half of all suicides per year. Add in the murders caused by guns, the accidental deaths caused by guns, the law enforcement killings caused by guns, and the average comes out to more than one hundred Americans killed by bullets every day. On that same average day, another two hundred-plus are wounded by guns, which translates into eighty thousand a year. Eighty thousand wounded and forty thousand dead, or one hundred and twenty thousand ambulance calls and emergency room cases for every twelve-month tick of the clock, but the toll of gun violence goes far beyond the pierced and bloodied bodies of the victims themselves, spilling out into the devastations visited upon their immediate families, their extended families, their friends, their fellow workers, the people of their neighborhoods, their schools, their churches, their softball teams, and communities at large-the vast brigade of lives touched by the presence of a single person who lives or has lived among them-meaning that the number of Americans directly or indirectly marked by gun violence every year must be tallied in the millions"--
Subjects: Firearms accidents; Firearms ownership; Mass shootings; Mortality; Victims of violent crimes;

The kobalt dossier / by Lustbader, Eric,author.;
"Evan Ryder is back in The Kobalt Dossier, the stunning follow-up to The Nemesis Manifesto from New York Times bestselling author Eric Van Lustbader. After thwarting the violent, international, fascist syndicate known as Nemesis, Evan Ryder returns to Washington, D.C., to find her secret division of the DOD shut down and her deceased sister's children missing. Now the target of a cabal of American billionaires who were among Nemesis's supporters, Evan and her former boss, Ben Butler, must learn to work together as partners - and navigate their intricate past. Their search will take them from Istanbul to Odessa to an ancient church deep within the Carpathian Mountains of Romania. And all along the way, an unimaginable enemy stalks in the shadows, an adversary whose secretive past will upend Evan's entire world and everything she holds dear"--
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Spy fiction.; United States. Department of Defense; Spies; Intelligence officers; Women intelligence officers; Conspiracies; Kidnapping; Missing children;

Say their names : how Black lives came to matter in America / by Bunn, Curtis,author.; Charles, Nick(Journalist),author.; Cottman, Michael H.,author.; Gaines, Patrice,author.; Harriston, Keith,author.;
Includes bibliographical references."For many, the story of the weeks of protests in the summer of 2020 began with the horrific nine minutes and twenty-nine seconds when Police Officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd on camera, and it ended with the sweeping federal, state, and intrapersonal changes that followed. It is a simple story, wherein white America finally witnessed enough brutality to move their collective consciousness. The only problem is that it isn't true. George Floyd was not the first Black man to be killed by police-he wasn't even the first to inspire nation-wide protests-yet his death came at a time when America was already at a tipping point. In say their names, five seasoned journalists probe this critical shift. With a piercing examination of how inequality has been propagated throughout history, from Black imprisonment and the Convict Leasing program to long-standing predatory medical practices to over-policing, the authors highlight the disparities that have long characterized the dangers of being Black in America. They examine the many moderate attempts to counteract these inequalities, from the modern Civil Rights movement to Ferguson, and how the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others pushed compliance with an unjust system to its breaking point. Finally, they outline the momentous changes that have resulted from this movement, while at the same time proposing necessary next steps to move forward. With a combination of penetrating, focused journalism and affecting personal insight, the authors bring together their collective years of reporting, creating a cohesive and comprehensive understanding of racial inequality in America"--
Subjects: African Americans; African Americans; Black lives matter movement.;