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Support Support Support How God supported me and how I have in some ways supported others, is the most important part of life’s journey. It’s not easy, as my book shows, but we can all be winners at life with God’s help. We can all be as God will have us be.

The dark of the night. Two girls are running for their lives. Terrified, one falls, and unable to get up, she forces her friend to go on without her, to save herself. For her there is no escape as their attackers close in. The following morning the body of a young girl is found in the canal. DCI Thackeray, recently returned to the force after a bungled kidnapping operation left him near death, is put on the case. But with the entire town's attention focused on the football team's upcoming match against Chelsea, no one seems to be able to tell the police anything about how the girl died, let alone identify her. Thackeray's girlfriend, reporter Laura Ackroyd, also has much to investigate. The appointment of a female chairman at the football club has annoyed many people, in particular the men who dominate the share holders and who will apparently stoop to any depth to force her out. Thackeray and Ackroyd soon discover that their two stories are linked, and the common denominators are the shady dealings of the club's directors and the unsavoury goings on at the infamous post game parties. But as Laura becomes more and more involved in the case does she risk putting Thackeray's job and her life in danger?

Benbow Smith is a spymaster with the British Foreign Office. His full name is a mouthful - Benbow Collingwood Horation Smith. It is such an interesting name that someone, likely Smith but possibly someone else, taught Ananais a pithy little jingle to recite with little or no provocation: "Three jolly admirals all in a row; Collingwood, Nelson, and bold Benbow". [It sounds like it was taken from a naval drinking song or poem but I could find no similar reference on the web.] Ananais, by the way since I knew you were wondering, is a very, very talkative parrot that Smith owns and for whom he has considerable affection. Ananais is frequenly spouting off about this or that, often lacing his statements with Spanish racy language. Since Smith does a lot of his meetings with people in the study of his home, the same study where Ananais rules, the chatty bird hears a considerable amount and loves to recite some of it back. Described as "a very tall, thin man, with the forward stoop and slightly peering gaxe of a scholar", Smith wears large horn-rimmed glasses which he often pushes up on to his forehead when not reading. Though he is named after three admirals, it is written that "a less nautical figure could hardly have been imagined" but when it came to using his mind, he was every bit as leader-qualified as any naval officer who ever earned a star. Interestingly, it is said that though he distinguished himself at college, he then "passed into obscurity" and largely vanished. It was a few years later than he was again noticed by the world, or at least a small part of it, when after publishing a monograph on Russian ikons and another on early German woodcuts, neither of which got any attention from anyone, he came out with a book entitled The European Problem which was not only a treatise on how things stood in the years before WWI but also keenly predicted what would certainly transpire as a result. He was amazingly and chillingly accurate. When the Great War did come, Smith was in constant demand because of his "intimate knowledge of almost every European country". Virtually every governmental department that Britain had made a call to his door at one time or another and he helped as best he could, the results of which made his voice very much something to listen to. Despite his resultant power and prestige, the man changed little. He was still a bachelor and decidedly considered an eccentric. One young bride having received as a wedding gift an expensive string of pearls lovingly but accurately referred to him as "a dinky old duck". Which very well describes Benbow Smith. What is not so easily described is his amazing and very hush-hush connection to the cloak and dagger world, mostly handled from the study where his talkative parrot holds reign.Dora Amy Elles (November 10, 1878 - January 28, 1961) wrote under the pen name of Patricia Wentworth. She was a British crime writer, best known for her Miss Silver Mysteries, though she also wrote romantic novels. Miss Silver is frequently compared to Agatha Christie's Jane Marple, though Patricia Wentworth's first Miss Silver novel pre-dated Agatha Christie's first Miss Marple novel by two years, and may well have inspired Agatha Christie.The day before she was to be married, a woman said she was going to visit a sick relative and was not seen again. Her fiancée asks Benbow Smith for help finding what happened to her. Smith is certain her disappearance is connected to several other vanishings over the past few years. The betrothed must put his life in danger to stop a madman's evil plot.In Marion Shaw & Sabine Vanacker's book Reflecting on Miss Marple, they said: "while Miss Marple may receive ten times the attention as Miss Silver, ... the woefully neglected Miss Silver is the real deal - a professional investigator and a stand-up woman, a true forerunner of all future female private eyes."

Religious life is vitally necessary to the Catholic church today. But it will exist in new and varied forms which speak to the spiritual hungers of different societies, ethnic cultures, and generations. God’s Call Is Everywhere is the first comparative analysis of research in six countries investigating women who have entered vowed religious life in Catholicism in the twenty-first century. The data include survey responses from institute leaders, formation directors, and the women themselves, conducted in the United States, Canada, Australia, and France, along with focus groups and interviews in Ireland, the United Kingdom, and France. Through a careful summary of these studies and comparing differences, readers of this book will have a better understanding of the hopes and concerns of those discerning a vocation to religious life and learn how to move forward in the future. God’s Call Is Everywhere includes six major points of comparison: * Demographic characteristics of the women entering religious life and their personal and familial backgrounds * What attracted them to religious life and to their specific religious institute * What they find most satisfying and most challenging about religious life * Their hopes and concerns for the future * Experiences and programs that were helpful in their vocational discernment * Aspects of the larger society, of the Church, and of the religious institutes which make vocational discernment difficult for women today The analysis is followed by six reflective essays, two of which discuss the implications of the findings for future vocational discernment programs and four of which compare the findings to religious life in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Religious life is vitally necessary to the Catholic church today. But it will exist in new and varied forms which speak to the spiritual hungers of different societies, ethnic cultures, and generations. God’s Call Is Everywhere is the first comparative analysis of research in six countries investigating women who have entered vowed religious life in Catholicism in the twenty-first century. The data include survey responses from institute leaders, formation directors, and the women themselves, conducted in the United States, Canada, Australia, and France, along with focus groups and interviews in Ireland, the United Kingdom, and France. Through a careful summary of these studies and comparing differences, readers of this book will have a better understanding of the hopes and concerns of those discerning a vocation to religious life and learn how to move forward in the future. God’s Call Is Everywhere includes six major points of comparison: Demographic characteristics of the women entering religious life and their personal and familial backgrounds What attracted them to religious life and to their specific religious institute What they find most satisfying and most challenging about religious life Their hopes and concerns for the future Experiences and programs that were helpful in their vocational discernment Aspects of the larger society, of the Church, and of the religious institutes which make vocational discernment difficult for women today The analysis is followed by six reflective essays, two of which discuss the implications of the findings for future vocational discernment programs and four of which compare the findings to religious life in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.