Cult and Controversy: The Worship of the Eucharist Outside Mass by Nathan Mitchell, The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, MN, 1982. 

In the first part of this book, Father Mitchell traces the evolution within the Roman Catholic tradition of the cult of the Eucharist outside Mass, a change from holy meal to ritual drama that implied significant alterations of content, meaning, and interpretation. The second section comments on the mandates of Vatican Council II whose call to a return to proper praxis necessitated changes in then current pastoral practice and theological interpretation.

The Man in the Red Coat by Julian Barnes, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2019.  

Barnes unfurls stories of the lives that surround Dr. Samuel Pozzi during the Belle Epoque in Paris. Pozzi was a society doctor who pioneered the science of gynecology, a free thinker and a man of science, protestant in a Catholic country and his complicated private life. He was the subject of on of John Singer Sargent’s greatest portraits. A wild tapestry of glamour and pleasure: Oscar Wilde, Sarah Berhardt, Marcel Prut, James Whistler, Henry James and others.  A man who was passionate and whose ideas and achievement were far ahead of his time.

The Girls: A Story of Village LIfe by John Bowen, McNally Editions, New York, 1986. 

A wry, macabre tale of simple living, brutal murder, and a reasonably happy couple.

Echoes of Grace by Guadalupe Garcia McCall, TU Books, New York, 2022.

Guadalupe García McCall explores sisterhood, family secrets, intergenerational trauma, life, and love in a modern Gothic setting with a magical realist twist. In Eagle Pass, Texas, Grace struggles to understand the "echoes" she inherited from her mother--visions which often distort her reality. One morning, as her sister, Mercy, rushes off to work, a disturbing echo takes hold of Grace, and within moments, tragedy strikes.

So you want to talk about race by Ijeoma Oluo, Seal Press, 2019. 

Written by a black, queer woman, this is a good book to enter the discussion of racism. Oluo in brief chapters addresses from her experience issues that include, what is racism, privilege, affirmative action, cultural appropriation, microaggressions, the “N” word and more… If you are white, do not expect for the author to look to make you comfortable, she does not. I didn’t agree with everything but it allows for listening to a black person’s experience. Listening is important in at this time. A worthwhile read. Good for a discussion group.