An award-winning journalist vividly reports her two-year, 60,000-mile global odyssey in the company of exceptional women who choose to dedicate their lives to Buddhism. In 2011, Christine Toomey met an unforgettable group of Tibetan Buddhist nuns. After hearing their stories--of prison, extreme hardship, and ultimately fleeing across the Himalayas into exile--she resolved to learn more about the private, courageous women of Buddhism: who they are,...

"A revelatory account of how Christian monks identified distraction as a fundamental challenge, and how their efforts to defeat it can inform ours, more than a millennium later"-- Provided by publisher. "The digital era is beset by distraction: we fantasize about escaping our screen, and recapturing a world with less noise. Kreiner demonstrates that the attempts of monks to contemplate the divine order and its ethical requirements were all-consuming,...

"England, 1255. Sarah is only seventeen when she chooses to become an anchoress, a holy woman much like Saint Hildegard of Bingen, shut away in a small cell, measuring seven by nine paces, at the side of the village church. Fleeing the grief of losing a much-loved sister in childbirth and the pressure to marry, she decides to renounce the world, with all its dangers, desires, and temptations, and to commit herself to a life of prayer. But it soon...

Sisters is the first major history of the pivotal role played by nuns in the building of American society. Nuns were the first feminists, argues Fialka. They became the nation's first cadre of independent, professional women. Some nursed, some taught, and many created and managed new charitable organizations, including large hospitals and colleges. In the 1800s nuns moved west with the frontier, often starting the first hospitals and schools in...

In a radical vision for the future of Christianity, American Conservative columnist Rod Dreher calls on American Christians to prepare for the coming Dark Age by embracing an ancient Christian way of life. From the inside, American churches are hollowed out by the departure of young people and by an insipid pseudo-Christianity. From the outside, they are beset by challenges to religious liberty in a rapidly secularizing culture. Keeping Hillary Clinton...

Sybella locates her fellow assassin and novitiate of the convent of Saint Mortain, only to discover that Genevieve has made a lethal mistake, and there are far-reaching consequences for loved ones entanged in French court intrigues.