Books With Christian Themes
Discover inspiring books with Christian themes that uplift and enrich your faith. Explore our curated list of powerful reads for spiritual growth and biblical wisdom.
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Mariette in Ecstasy
by Ron Hansen
The highly acclaimed and provocatively rendered story of a young postulant's claim to divine possession and religious ecstasy.
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The Power and the Glory
by Graham Greene
A tormented, alcoholic priest is pursued by an idealistic lieutenant during an anti-clerical persecution in Mexico.
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Gilead
by Marilynne Robinson
In 1956, toward the end of his life, Reverend John Ames begins a letter to his young son, sharing the story of his life and explaining how his faith influenced his choices and actions.
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The Penguin Complete Father Brown
by Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Father Brown is an eccentric priest with his own particular way of dealing with crime. David Timson, having completed the whole of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes canon, turns his hand to the genial but certainly not innocent priest.
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The Betrothed
by Alessandro Manzoni
“The great plague novel.” —The New Yorker Set in Lombardy during the Spanish occupation of the late 1620s, The Betrothed tells the story of two young lovers, Renzo and Lucia, prevented from marrying by the petty tyrant Don Rodrigo, who desires Lucia for himself. Forced to flee, they are then cruelly separated, and must face many dangers including plague, famine and imprisonment, and confront a variety of strange characters—the mysterious Nun of Monza, the fiery Father Cristoforo and the sinister "Unnamed"—in their struggle to be reunited. A vigorous portrayal of enduring passion, The Betrothed's exploration of love, power, and faith presents a whirling panorama of seventeenth-century Italian life and is one of the greatest European historical novels. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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The Sparrow
by Mary Doria Russell
A visionary work that combines speculative fiction with deep philosophical inquiry, The Sparrow tells the story of a charismatic Jesuit priest and linguist, Emilio Sandoz, who leads a scientific mission entrusted with a profound task: to make first contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life. The mission begins in faith, hope, and beauty, but a series of small misunderstandings brings it to a catastrophic end. Praise for The Sparrow “A startling, engrossing, and moral work of fiction.”—The New York Times Book Review “Important novels leave deep cracks in our beliefs, our prejudices, and our blinders. The Sparrow is one of them.”—Entertainment Weekly “Powerful . . . The Sparrow tackles a difficult subject with grace and intelligence.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Provocative, challenging . . . recalls both Arthur C. Clarke and H. G. Wells, with a dash of Ray Bradbury for good measure.”—The Dallas Morning News “[Mary Doria] Russell shows herself to be a skillful storyteller who subtly and expertly builds suspense.”—USA Today
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Lying Awake
by Mark Salzman
Mark Salzman's Lying Awake is a finely wrought gem that plumbs the depths of one woman's soul, and in so doing raises salient questions about the power-and price-of faith. Sister John's cloistered life of peace and prayer has been electrified by ever more frequent visions of God's radiance, leading her toward a deep religious ecstasy. Her life and writings have become examples of devotion. Yet her visions are accompanied by shattering headaches that compel Sister John to seek medical help. When her doctor tells her an illness may be responsible for her gift, Sister John faces a wrenching choice: to risk her intimate glimpses of the divine in favor of a cure, or to continue her visions with the knowledge that they might be false-and might even cost her her life.
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In this House of Brede
by Rumer Godden
"A novel of sensitive dedication." --"The Atlantic Monthly" "Rumer Godden deals precisely with the theme of the religious life . . . as representing 'the heart of holiness of the Church.' It is at once a life of great peace and often equally intense struggle." --"America" magazine This extraordinarily sensitive and insightful portrait of religious life centers on Philippa Talbot, a highly successful professional woman who leaves her life among the London elite to join a cloistered Benedictine community. In this gripping narrative of the crises surrounding the ancient Brede abbey, Rumer Godden penetrates to the mysterious, inner heart of a religious community--a place of complexity and conflict, as well as joy and love. It is a place where Philippa, to her own surprise and her friends' astonishment, finds her life by losing it.
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Peace Like a River
by Leif Enger
A bag with ten copies of the title that may also include miscellaneous notes, discussion questions, biographical information, and reading lists to assist book group discussion leaders.
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A Canticle for Leibowitz
by Walter M. Miller (Jr.)
The winner of the 1961 Hugo Award for Best Novel, Miller's bestselling work is a true landmark of 20th-century literature--a chilling and still-provocative look at a post-apocalyptic future.
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Morte D'Urban
by J.F. Powers
Winner of The 1963 National Book Award for Fiction. The hero of J.F. Powers's comic masterpiece is Father Urban, a man of the cloth who is also a man of the world. Charming, with an expansive vision of the spiritual life and a high tolerance for moral ambiguity, Urban enjoys a national reputation as a speaker on the religious circuit and has big plans for the future. But then the provincial head of his dowdy religious order banishes him to a retreat house in the Minnesota hinterlands. Father Urban soon bounces back, carrying God's word with undaunted enthusiasm through the golf courses, fishing lodges, and backyard barbecues of his new turf. Yet even as he triumphs his tribulations mount, and in the end his greatest success proves a setback from which he cannot recover. First published in 1962, Morte D'Urban has been praised by writers as various as Gore Vidal, William Gass, Mary Gordon, and Philip Roth. This beautifully observed, often hilarious tale of a most unlikely Knight of Faith is among the finest achievements of an author whose singular vision assures him a permanent place in American literature.
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The Diary of a Country Priest
by Georges Bernanos
In this classic Catholic novel, Bernanos movingly recounts the life of a young French country priest who grows to understand his provincial parish while learning spiritual humility himself. Awarded the Grand Prix for Literature by the Academie Francaise, The Diary of a Country Priest was adapted into an acclaimed film by Robert Bresson. "A book of the utmost sensitiveness and compassion...it is a work of deep, subtle and singularly encompassing art." — New York Times Book Review (front page)
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Mr. Blue
by Myles Connolly
J. Blue is a young man who decides to take Christianity seriously, not as a chore but as a challenge. He spends his inherited wealth almost as soon as he gets it. He lives in a packing box on a New York City rooftop. He embraces the poor as his best friends and wisest companions, distrusts the promises of technology (except for the movies), and is fascinated by anything involving the wide expanse of God's universe. He is the ultimate free spirit, it seems; but what is the source--and purpose--of his freedom? This novel about a contemporary St. Francis figure has delighted and inspired countless readers since it was first published in 1928.
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The Children of Men
by P. D. James
In 2021, with the human race becoming extinct because of the infertility of all males, Oxford historian Theodore Faron is drawn into the schemes of an unlikely group of revolutionaries out to save society.