First Church

Brian Roy is a ghost-hunter extraordinaire. His latest adventure involves headless Japanese soldiers wreaking havoc in a New Hampshire church. The stats are grisly. Two boys blinded. Another boy shot. Cops killed. The bodies keep piling up, and the ghosts’ thirst for vengeance is as insatiable as their thirst for sake!

Beginning with the life of Jesus, Robert Louis Wilken narrates the dramatic spread and development of Christianity over the first thousand years of its history. Moving through the formation of early institutions, practices, and beliefs to the transformations of the Roman world after the conversion of Constantine, he sheds new light on the subsequent stories of Christianity in the Latin West, the Byzantine and Slavic East, the Middle East, and Central Asia. 

A 2026 Audie Award Winner for Nonfiction and Finalist for Narration by the Author NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * In the spirit of George Carlin and Christopher Hitchens, the son of a former Catholic nun and a Franciscan brother delivers a deeply irreverent and biblically correct takedown of...

Newly revised and edited The Apostolic Fathers in Modern English Experience the earliest Christian writings, clearly translated for today. This edition presents the complete collection traditionally known as the Apostolic Fathers in fresh, readable modern English, paired with concise, thematic essays at the end of the book that frame the world, worship, and witness of the early church. If you’ve tried public-domain or Victorian renderings and bounced off the archaic phrasing, this volume is built to be faithful, direct, and readable, without dumbing anything down. What’s Included (...

We hear the voices of the early Church Fathers even today. Their teachings, their guidance, their insights, and their sacrifice shaped the Catholic Church. They defined the canon of Scripture. They developed our creeds and forms of worship. They defined Christianity's distinctive moral sense. But who were they? What can we learn from their ancient teachings? What can the Fathers teach the twenty-first century—about holiness, culture, faith, and the Gospel.

Carl Weber is the New York Times best-selling author of such fan favorites as So You Call Yourself a Man. The First Lady is the tale of a preacher's wife who learns she's dying and vows to find her husband another woman. There is no shortage of ladies who want her man, but will she be able to find a suitable replacement among the conniving church women?

The theological foundation of the Christian faith has just been delivered to the belly of the Roman beast. But the man who wrote it is walking straight into a death trap. In c. 57 AD, a battered wooden merchant’s case arrives in the sprawling, pagan capital of Rome, carried by a lone woman named Phoebe. Inside is a single, heavy scroll of Egyptian papyrus: the Apostle Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. As the patriarchs of the underground house churches unseal the letter, they are struck by a theological earthquake. Paul’s unyielding words strip away the pride of the Jewish legalists and ...

A fragile church. A bitter theological war. The battle for the soul of the Gentile world has begun. It is the middle of the first century, and the rapidly growing Christian church is on the verge of a catastrophic fracture. In Antioch, men from Judea have arrived with a terrifying mandate: unless the Gentile converts submit to the knife of circumcision and the strict Laws of Moses, they cannot be saved. The gospel of grace is under direct assault, and the resulting panic threatens to tear congregations apart from Syria to Rome. Caius Septimius, a former Pharisee turned Roman elder, finds ...

THE GREATEST BATTLE FOR THE EARLY CHURCH WAS NOT FOUGHT WITH SWORDS, BUT WITH IDEAS. It is c. 52 AD. The Apostle Paul has left the familiarity of the synagogues to march directly into the intellectual and carnal strongholds of the pagan world. From the towering philosophies of Mars' Hill in Athens to the bustling, vice-ridden streets of Corinth, Paul wages a relentless spiritual war to plant the banner of a crucified King. Back in Rome, the leaders of the hidden house churches—Caius the scholar, Andronicus the wealthy merchant, Lucius the tentmaker, and Rufus the son of the cross-bearer...

Discover the Unity and Diversity of the Early Church The Christian church of the early centuries spread throughout much of Asia, Africa, and Europe, spoke many languages, was situated within diverse cultural settings, and had varied worship practices; yet it maintained a vital unity on core...

The Roman sword cannot stop the truth. The religious elite cannot hide it. The Blueprint is about to be unsealed. It is c. 51 AD. The Apostle Paul arrives in the sprawling, pagan metropolis of Corinth alone, exhausted, and carrying the marks of Roman scourging on his back. Hunted by the empire and despised by his own people, he possesses only one weapon against the overwhelming darkness of the city: the unencrypted truth of the living God. Setting up a quiet beachhead in the home of a wealthy Roman named Justus, Paul and his fellow tentmakers—Aquila, Priscilla, Silas, and Timotheus—...

Jerusalem is full of pilgrims. Rome rules with iron. And fifty days after the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, something impossible is about to tear through the city. The Pentecost Pilgrims is a sweeping historical novel set during the explosive days surrounding Pentecost in Jerusalem between 33-36 AD. Through the eyes of pilgrims, scholars, tradesmen, widows, zealots, and seekers from across the ancient world, the story plunges readers into the fear, tension, and spiritual hunger of first-century Judea. Lucius Vettius, a weary Roman leatherworker searching for truth. Caius Septimius, a ...

The New York Times bestseller and definitive history of Christianity for our time—from the award-winning author of The Reformation and Silence A product of electrifying scholarship conveyed with commanding skill, Diarmaid MacCulloch's Christianity goes back to the origins of the Hebrew Bible...

Narrated by Derek Perkins From a renowned historian who writes with "maximum vividness" (The New Yorker) comes the most authoritative, readable single-volume military history of the brutal struggle for the Holy Land. Nine hundred years ago, a vast Christian army, summoned to holy war by the Pope...

A FADING MEMORY. A DEADLY HERESY. A DESPERATE QUEST FOR THE WRITTEN WORD. Rome, 36 AD. Five years after the fires of Pentecost, the early Christian house churches are in crisis. The oral traditions and memories of the apostles' teachings are beginning to blur, leaving the vulnerable flock exposed to a brilliant and deadly new threat. Dositheus, a smooth-talking disciple of Simon Magus, has infiltrated the Roman believers. Preaching a "spiritual" Christ who only appeared to be human—a Savior who never bled and never suffered—he offers a cowardly but seductive escape for Christians ...

THE BATTLE FOR THE GOSPEL HAS BEGUN. In the mid-first century, the early church faces its greatest trials yet. While a devastating physical famine ravages Judea, a far more deadly starvation threatens the newly saved Gentiles: a famine of the Word. As Herod Agrippa unleashes a bloody persecution in Jerusalem—claiming the life of James and imprisoning Peter—the believers in Rome gather their wealth to send relief. But securing the physical survival of the saints is only the beginning of the war. Sent out by the Holy Ghost, Paul and Barnabas march into the dark, pagan frontiers of Cyprus ...

Discover the Diversity and Unity of the Early Church The Christian church of the early centuries spread throughout much of Asia, Africa, and Europe, spoke many languages, was situated within diverse cultural settings, and had varied worship practices; yet it maintained a vital unity on core...

THE CLASH OF HEAVEN AND EARTH HAS IGNITED. AND THE ANCIENT WORLD WILL BURN. In the sweltering summer of the first century, the Apostle Paul marches into the dark, pagan stronghold of Ephesus. He does not hide in the shadows. Renting the public Hall of Tyrannus, he launches a relentless, daily assault on the minds and spirits of Asia. As raw, divine power manifests through healings and the public burning of occult scrolls, the very foundations of the city’s economy begin to crack. Watching his wealth evaporate, Demetrius the silversmith rallies the trade guilds, transforming their economic...

Paul is second only to Jesus as the most important person in the birth of Christianity, and yet he continues to be controversial, even among Christians. How could the letters of Paul be used both to inspire radical grace and to endorse systems of oppression - condoning slavery, subordinating women, condemning homosexual behavior? Borg and Crossan use the best of biblical and historical scholarship to explain the reasons for Paul's mixed reputation and reveal to us what scholars have known for decades: The later letters of Paul were created by the early church to dilute Paul's message.

She avenged the fallen, rebelled against an empire, and commanded a titan itself. Now Leiyn must win a war against death incarnate. Oathbound to a deceased shaman, the ranger Leiyn ventures north with her comrades to fight alongside the Gasts in their ancestral war. But this enemy is like none other Leiyn has faced. Ancient and malevolent, the very world bends to their dominion. To overcome them, she seeks to rediscover a secret lost to time, a magic that even dryvans fear: the true power of titans.