Rome Churches

Compulsive, gripping and dark, Never Be Broken is the stunning new novel in the Marnie Rome series, for fans of Peter James, Mark Billingham, and Val McDermid. Children are dying on London's streets. Frankie Reece, stabbed through the heart outside a corner shop. Others recruited from care homes, picked up and exploited, passed like gifts between gangs. They are London's lost. Then Raphaela Belsham is killed. She's 13 years old, her father is a man of influence, from a smart part of town. And she's white. Suddenly, the establishment is taking notice.

In recent decades, Americans in Rome have revived an ancient Christian custom: the daily pilgrimage to dozens of Rome's most striking churches during Lent and Easter Week. Along this historical and spiritual pathway, pilgrims encounter hidden artistic wonders and treasured Christian commentaries while also confronting the great mysteries of the Christian faith through a program of biblical and early Christian readings. The itinerary of the Roman station church pilgrimage offers Christians an opportunity to reflect on their religion and ponder the quality of their discipleship.

The winter cold is biting, and a series of assaults is pulling DI Marnie Rome and DS Noah Jake out into the frosty, mean streets of London far more than they'd like. The attacks seem random, but when Marnie's family home is ransacked, there are signs that the burglary can have been committed only by a child - and someone who knows all about her. It will take a prison visit to her foster brother, Stephen, to help Marnie see the connections - and to force both her and Noah to face the truth about the creeping, chilling reaches of a troubled upbringing.

Based on a wealth of documents long buried in the Vatican archives, Prisoner of the Vatican tells the story of the Church's secret attempt to block the unification of Italy and seize control, not in ancient times, but in the late 19th century. For more than 50 years, the pope was a self-imposed prisoner within the Vatican walls, planning to flee Italy, to return only as the restored ruler of Rome and the Papal States.

For nearly a thousand years following its foundation, there was only one Christian Church. Centered in the city of Rome, the Church expanded and grew until it became the dominant religion in Europe and beyond. The early growth of the Church had been suppressed by the Romans until the Emperor Constantine became the first to convert the empire to Christianity, and from that point forward, the growth of the Church was inextricably linked with the Roman Empire, the most powerful military, economic, and political force in the ancient world.