Welcome to our Catholic Summer Reading book selections for 2008.

This year's program officially launches the first week of June. Our popular program returns with an all new selection of outstanding Catholic books for this year! Please visit www.catholicsummerreading.com for more details and to find book discussion guides for selected program titles - we will have these posted shortly. You may also want to visit www.catholicbookdiscussion.com to join in some lively online discussions of the books. Happy reading!

Remember, when you go off on vacation this summer, to the beach, to that proverbial cabin in the woods, or to visit family in another state, don't leave your faith behind!

This is the most acclaimed, short introduction to the Crusades - by  the world's foremost authority on the subject! Find out the truth for yourself and separate fact from fiction. Few attempts had been made to defined 'the crusade' before the first edition of this book was published in 1977. Since then, a number of historians have built on Jonathan Riley-Smith's original conclusions. Now …

      Wheat That Springeth Green , J. F. Powers's beautifully realized final work, is a comic foray into the commercialized wilderness of modern American life. Its hero, Joe Hackett, is a high school track star who sets out to be a saint. But seminary life and priestly apprenticeship soon damp his ardor, and by the time he has been given a parish of his own he has traded in his …

A superb novel from one of the greatest Catholic fiction writers of the 20th century. Wise Blood, Flannery O’Connor’s astonishing and haunting first novel, is a classic of twentieth-century literature. Focused on the story of Hazel Motes, a twenty-two-year-old caught in an unending struggle against his innate, desperate fate, this tale of redemption, retribution, false prophets, …

By Fr. Walter Ciszek, S.J. Father Walter Ciszek, S.J., author of the best-selling He Leadeth Me, tells here the gripping, astounding story of his twenty-three years in Russian prison camps in Siberia, how he was falsely imprisoned as an "American spy", the incredible rigors of daily life as a prisoner, and his extraordinary faith in God and commitment to his priestly vows and …