Bøger af James T. Baker

Having solved murder mysteries in Mississippi, Korea, Scotland, and Italy, everyone's favorite monastic sleuth, Father Columba, finds himself on vacation in Music City, U.S.A., Nashville Tennessee. There he finds an all too familiar tragedy, one based in love. How he stumbles his way through conflicting clues to solve, the mystery provides his fans with still another highly enjoyable story. In December of 1999, Mother Maria Angela Reynolds of the Convent of Saint Mary Magdalene in Nashville Tennessee penned this missive about Father Columba's Nashville adventures: "This brief memoir came into my possession 20 years ago, that is in 1979, arriving addressed to me at our convent but without the name or address of the sender, postmarked La Trobe, Pennsylvania. I have kept it with me until now when I will place it in our archives. Perhaps after I am gone, it will be discovered and published, and by then all who are mentioned herein will be dead, which is what Columba wanted and quite likely for the best. When I read it for the first time-I have read it many times since then-I discovered that the dear man we knew as Father Quentin, the man who solved our curious mystery and helped save us from the curiosity of journalists and the greed of realtors, the man who made sure we survived the awful 60s and 70s, was in truth Father Columba, who is now known throughout the world for having solved other mysteries for Mother Church." Become immersed in the backdrop of the 1960s Nashville as an undercover Father Columba once again rides to discover the truth behind a tragic death. Along the way, Father Columba discovers a hidden lover's secret, Nashville's country music scene, and nuns on roller-skates in Boys and Girls Together. The clever and quirky Father Columba Mystery Series is the invention of Western Kentucky University history professor, James T. Baker. Boys and Girls Together is the third installment of the Father Columba Mysteries Series. Following on the heels of Prior Knowledge and Good for the Soul, Boys and Girls Together is a wonderful introduction to the world of an amateur sleuthing monk who's no saint..

Be prepared in the pages of this book to have fresh light cast on the Human Experience-and therefore on the many experiences of your own life. Author James Baker has here collected the stories from his lifetime of adventures to provoke and inspire you by letting you see yourself in them. Baker grew up in the American Southland, traveled and studied in Europe, and taught both in the United States and in Asia. Everywhere he has lived and traveled, he has encouraged people to tell him their stories; he has listened carefully to them and jotted them down; and now, here he shares them with you. His stories of fantasy, escape, tribulations, and ecstasy demonstrate the bonds we humans form with people, places, and events. In them you will recognize the people, places, and events that you have known, hated and loved, feared and embraced. Read them with an open mind and an open heart. The will make you laugh, they may make you cry. They will give you pleasure.

Once more Father Columba takes up his pen to record another of his adventures-this time as much a misadventure. Once again he argues with God, encounters colorful characters, and bumbles his way to the solution of a riddle. Having found a missing monk from Melk Abbey near Vienna Austria, he has been ordered to go to Rome to do the same for the Abbey of San Ambrosio. Father Columba, who has been compared to G. K. Chesterton's Father Brown, does not consider himself a sleuth, but he has taken an oath of obedience, so off he goes to the Eternal City. In Rome he uncovers still another puzzling dimension of the human dilemma, one that requires him, the host Abbot, and even Pope Paul VI to confront a moral decision none of them has been trained to treat. Once more it seems that Columba is opening doors to a New World. You are in for a treat as you read this memoir by a man who thought at the age of 65 he could retire to read a bucket list of books, only to be called to a new Holy Vocation: solving mysteries for his fellow Catholics great and small. If you like this elderly Sherlock Holmes, you will want to read his other memoirs, set in Oxford Mississippi, Seoul South Korea, the Isle of Iona, and Nashville Tennessee.

Once more Father Columba takes up his pen to record another of his adventures-although he sometimes thinks of them as misadventures. Once again he feuds with God, meets wonderfully colorful characters, and bumbles his way to the solution of a riddle. This time he has been ordered by his Father Superior to answer a request from Melk Abbey near Vienna Austria to help the Abbot there locate one of his monks, who has mysteriously disappeared. Father Columba, who has been compared to G. K. Chesterton's Father Brown, does not consider himself a sleuth, but he does abide by his Vow of Obedience and heads off to the Center of European Music to do what he can to help his fellow Benedictines. There he delves into the disappearance of the Monastic Brother and uncovers a love story unlike any he has ever encountered. On the other hand, on a free day he visits the tragic, romantic hunting lodge of Mayerling, and he realizes that the story he is pursuing is neither new nor unique. You are in for a real treat as you read this memoir by a monk who thought at the age of 65 he was retiring only to be called to a new Holy Vocation: solving mysteries involving his fellow Catholics great and small. Columba titles this story "The Third Monk" in reference to the famous novel and film "The Third Man," which was set in Vienna just after the Second World War. His title may not be original, but Father Columba himself certainly is. If you fall in love with this elderly Sherlock Holmes and are intrigued by his Viennese adventure, you will want to read his other adventures: set in Oxford Mississippi, Seoul South Korea, the Isle of Iona, The Eternal City of Rome, and the Capital of Country Music Nashville Tennessee.

Thomas Merton, known in religion as Father Louis, was born in France, in his words "under the sign of the waterbearer," in 1915. He studied at Cambridge in England and at Columbia in New York. As a student he lived what his friends have described as a bawdy life but turned from it to become a devout Roman Catholic. As America entered World War II he entered the abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky, and for 27 years he was a Trappist monk, in the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance. During his early days there he wrote an autobiography which became the third bestselling nonfiction book of the year 1949 and went on to write more than 50 more until in 1968 he at last went back into the world to meet with monastic leaders in Asia. Apparently Pope Francis read Metron's works and in his address to the U.S. Congress named Merton, Dorothy Day, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King Jr. as people he hoped Americans would emulate. He had entered Gethsemani on December 10, 1941, when he was nearing his twenty-seventh birthday; and on December 10, 1968, as he was nearing his fifty-fourth birthday, he was accidentally electrocuted while attending a religious conference in Bangkok, Thailand. Many in the West consider him a saint and many in the East consider him a manifestation of the Buddha. His autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, has been compared to the Confessions of Saint Augustine No one who reads it or any other of his books is ever the same again. The author of this play, James Thomas Baker, knew Thomas Merton and wrote the original version of the play soon after Merton's death. This completely revised and rewritten version, done as an expression of love and admiration in 2015, is to commemorate his hundred birthday.