Reading Heresy

Heresy studies is a new interdisciplinary, supra-religious, and humanist field of study that focuses on borderlands of dogma, probes the intersections between orthodoxy and heterodoxy, and explores the realms of dissent in religion, art, and literature. Free from confessional agendas and tolerant of both religious and non-religious perspectives, heresy studies fulfill an important gap in scholarly inquiry and artistic production. Divided into four parts, the volume explores intersections between heresy and modern literature, it discusses intricacies of medieval heresies, it analyzes issues of heresy in contemporary theology, and it demonstrates how heresy operates as an artistic stimulant. Rather than treating matters of heresy, blasphemy, unbelief, dissent, and non-conformism as subjects to be shunned or naively championed, the essays in this collection chart a middle course, energized by the dynamics of heterodoxy, dissent, and provocation, yet shining a critical light on both the challenges and the revelations of disruptive kinds of thinking and acting.

"An all-out women-driven, queer, transgender, multiracial takeover of the Old West . . . and that's exactly what Melissa Lenhardt delivers in her unapologetically badass western, Heresy." - New York Times "Lenhardt has created a bold new story where women have taken their rightful place in the narrative of the Outlaw Western genre; where wit, wisdom and wiles could mean the difference between life and death, and where the fellowship of women bested every challenge." -- Kathleen Kent Margaret Parker and Hattie LaCour never intended to turn outlaw. After being run off their ranch by a greedy cattleman, their family is left destitute. As women alone they have few choices: marriage, lying on their backs for money, or holding a gun. For Margaret and Hattie the choice is simple. With their small makeshift family, the gang pulls off a series of heists across the West. Though the newspapers refuse to give the female gang credit, their exploits don't go unnoticed. Pinkertons are on their trail, a rival male gang is determined to destroy them, and secrets among the group threaten to tear them apart. Now, Margaret and Hattie must find a way to protect their family, finish one last job, and avoid the hangman's noose. "Readers who relish an unusual narrative structure will enjoy this unique take on the traditional western." -- Booklist

"Padura’s Heretics spans and defies literary categories . . . ingenious." —Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air A sweeping novel of art theft, anti-Semitism, contemporary Cuba, and crime from a renowned Cuban author, Heretics is Leonardo Padura's greatest detective work yet. In 1939, the Saint Louis sails from Hamburg into Havana’s port with hundreds of Jewish refugees seeking asylum from the Nazi regime. From the docks, nine-year-old Daniel Kaminsky watches as the passengers, including his mother, father, and sister, become embroiled in a fiasco of Cuban corruption. But the Kaminskys have a treasure that they hope will save them: a small Rembrandt portrait of Christ. Yet six days later the vessel is forced to leave the harbor with the family, bound for the horrors of Europe. The Kaminskys, along with their priceless heirloom, disappear. Nearly seven decades later, the Rembrandt reappears in an auction house in London, prompting Daniel’s son to travel to Cuba to track down the story of his family’s lost masterpiece. He hires the down-on-his-luck private detective Mario Conde, and together they navigate a web of deception and violence in the morally complex city of Havana. In Heretics, Leonardo Padura takes us from the tenements and beaches of Cuba to Rembrandt’s gloomy studio in seventeenth-century Amsterdam, telling the story of people forced to choose between the tenets of their faith and the realities of the world, between their personal desires and the demands of their times. A grand detective story and a moving historical drama, Padura’s novel is as compelling, mysterious, and enduring as the painting at its center.

A driven art critic’s plan to steal a painting leads to murder in this classic neo-noir novel by the author of the Hoke Moseley series. Fast-talking, backstabbing, womanizing, and fiercely ambitious art critic James Figueras will do anything—blackmail, burglary, and beyond—to make a name for himself. When an unscrupulous collector offers Figueras a career-making chance to interview Jacques Debierue, the greatest living—and most reclusive—artist, the critic must decide how far he will go to become the art-world celebrity he hungers to be. Will Figueras stop at the opportunity to skim some cream for himself or push beyond morality’s limits to a bigger payoff? Crossing the art world with the underworld, Willeford creates a novel of dark hue and high aesthetic polish. The Burnt Orange Heresy—the 1970s crime classic now back in print—has lost none of its savage delights as it re-creates the making of a murderer, calmly and with exquisite tension, while satirizing the workings of the art world as the ultimate con. Now a major motion picture starring Donald Sutherland and Mick Jagger Praise for The Burnt Orange Heresy “Stunning . . . A novel full of genuine fun that also manages to make a level statement about the art world and its hermetic credulities.” —New Yorker

Book 54 in the New York Times Bestselling series The Horus Heresy. Discover the last battles leading to the Siege of Terra... The skies darken over Terra as the final battle for the Throne looms ever closer... As the Traitor primarchs muster to the Warmaster’s banner, it is Mortarion who is sent ahead as the vanguard of the Traitor forces. But as he and his warriors make way, they become lost in the warp and stricken by a terrible plague. Once thought of as unbreakable, the legendary Death Guard are brought to their knees. To save his Legion, Mortarion must strike a most terrible bargain that will damn his sons for eternity. Meanwhile, in the cloisters of Holy Terra, a plot is afoot to create sedition and carnage in advance of the Horus’s armies. Taking matters into his own hands, Malcador the Sigillite seeks to put a stop to any insurrection but discovers a plot that he will need all of his cunning and battle-craft to overcome.

Organized by heretical movements and texts from the Gnostic Gospels to The Book of Mormon, this book uses the work of James Joyce – particularly Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake – as a prism to explore how the history of Christian heresy remains part of how we read, write, and think about books today. Erickson argues that the study of classical, medieval, and modern debates over heresy and orthodoxy provide new ways of understanding modernist literature and literary theory. Using Joyce's works as a springboard to explore different perspectives and intersections of 20th century literature and the modern literary and religious imagination, this book gives us new insights into how our modern and “secular” reading practices unintentionally reflect how we understand our religious histories.

Heresy studies is a new interdisciplinary, supra-religious, and humanist field of study that focuses on borderlands of dogma, probes the intersections between orthodoxy and heterodoxy, and explores the realms of dissent in religion, art, and literature. Free from confessional agendas and tolerant of both religious and non-religious perspectives, heresy studies fulfill an important gap in scholarly inquiry and artistic production. Divided into four parts, the volume explores intersections between heresy and modern literature, it discusses intricacies of medieval heresies, it analyzes issues of heresy in contemporary theology, and it demonstrates how heresy operates as an artistic stimulant. Rather than treating matters of heresy, blasphemy, unbelief, dissent, and non-conformism as subjects to be shunned or naively championed, the essays in this collection chart a middle course, energized by the dynamics of heterodoxy, dissent, and provocation, yet shining a critical light on both the challenges and the revelations of disruptive kinds of thinking and acting.

A Siege of Terra novella from New York Times best selling author Graham McNeill. The Shattered Legion crew of the Sisypheum, broken and at the end of their endurance, find themselves divided; torn between following their resurrected captain on a suicidal mission or obeying orders to return to Terra and rejoin their Legion brothers. Following a series of garbled messages intercepted by the Kryptos, the divided warriors descend to the shattered surface of Luna. Here, their bonds of loyalty, duty, as well as their devotion to one another will be tested as ancient horrors of the earliest days of genemanipulation are unleashed, and a longburied secret is revealed. A secret that will have farreaching consequences for the future course of the galaxy, no matter who eventually claims Terra.

For the third edition, this comprehensive history of the great heretical movements of the Middle Ages has been updated to take account of recent research in the field.

Dark Ages: Vampire takes you to the nights before the Camarilla, when kine truly had reason to be afraid of the dark. The vampires of this bygone age ride the dark as lords, play their games with the crowned heads of Europe, and travel to the mysterious lands of the East as they wage their ages-old war. The diablerie of saulot, the waking of Mithras, the destruction of Michael the patriarch, the return of the Dracon -- it all means the time of reflection is over. The Inquisition stirs and the time to act is now. Across Europe, monarchs of the night set princes and barons at each other's undying throats. Young vampires take to the field ready to claim their domain and become powerful lords in their own right. Blood calls to blood. Vampires' corruption of the medieval Church. For adults only.