When it comes to God, there are believers and there are skeptics. But there are also Skeptical Believers, a particular kind of believer who lives with an Inner Atheist that is constantly raising objections. The Skeptical Believer is a book about making peace with your Inner Atheist, and about working out useful responses to questions that have no definitive answers. It steers a middle course between the modernist conviction that faith is agreement with a set of statements about God and the postmodernist assertion that religious faith is just one story among many, no more or less true than any other. The Skeptical Believer proposes that one can live a rich and meaningful life of faith without proof (and despite the weaknesses of the church) by seeing oneself as a character within an ancient story. As believers, skeptical or otherwise, always have.

Dan Taylor affirms a call to throw off the paralysis of uncertainty and to risk commitment to God without forfeiting the God-given gift of an inquiring mind.

In this, the third novel in the Jon Mote Mystery series, Jon and his special-needs sister, Judy, find more bodies showing up in their lives. This time it's Bible translators.

In Woe to the Scribes and Pharisees, Daniel Taylor's unique blend of wit, satire, drama, and provocative meditations on the Big Questions is once again on full display.

Jon Mote is determined to leave behind forever both the voices that once haunted him and his life-long confusion about the meaning of his life. He reconciles with his wife, Zillah, and takes a job as a book editor. When the publishing company that employs Jon decides to get in on the Bible-selling business, Jon finds himself in the last place in heaven or on earth that he would have expected: as a member of a Bible translation committee.

Knowing nothing about the Bible, the publisher assembles a team of translators based on the principles of diversity and name recognition. Wildly different understandings of nearly everything--theology, the meaning of texts, the direction of history, the nature of reality and of the church, among others--leads to take-no-prisoner clashes on issues large and small. While these surface tensions point to a profound collision of understandings of the cosmos and the human condition, Jon soon finds himself asking if they are also a matter of life and death.

TELL ME A STORY explores the story-shaped nature of our lives. We are born, live, and die within stories These stories shape how we see ourselves, the world, and our place in it. The first great storytellers in our lives are home, church, school, and popular culture. Knowing and embracing healthy stories are crucial to living rightly and well.

This book investigates the relationship between stories and meaning in life, the difference between character and personality, the ability of story to make connections between things, the power of story to bring about a desired future, how stories create community and a sense of belonging, and how broken stories can be healed.

Drawing on a wide range of stories-literary, popular, and personal. TELL ME A STORY offers profound insight, encouragement, and inspiration. It includes a series of questions designed to help readers identify the important stories in their own lives.

In this fourth and final entry in the Jon Mote Mysteries, our accidental sleuth and his sister Judy find themselves entangled in an international web of evil done and evil revenged. The often confused but always curious Jon finds himself the father of triplets and, for reasons not always clear even to himself, back in church. Judy, a woman with mental challenges but a heart as wide as the horizon, is now living with Jon and wife Zillah, helping them raise our children.

New to church, but somehow appointed to the Missions Committee (soon renamed the Care and Compassion Committee), Jon is asked to be the liaison with an immigrant family from Iraq the church wishes to aid. No one realizes that offering such help puts everyone in jeopardy, as evil done afar comes near to roost.

The cast of characters from past novels in the series reappears, including the band of residents from Judy's group home and the iron-willed theologian Sister Brigit. All are involved in this dramatic investigation into the nature of evil in the human experience and all contribute to Jon's stumbling but dogged pilgrimage toward greater wholeness.

A young woman is dead. A man with diminished capacity is accused. His friends, also wounded, try to help him. In the process, they teach Jon Mote a thing or two he desperately needs to learn.

Jon no longer hears voices, but he's not convinced a silent universe is much better than a haunted one. He's returned his sister Judy to her group home and taken a staff job there that puts him in the company of six folks who, a bit rebelliously, he calls Specials.

Jon thinks his job is to teach these people basic life skills like telling time, making change, and riding the bus. The world says they are to be pitied, perhaps even eliminated. At best taken care of. But he finds that Judy, Ralph, Bonita, Jimmy, Billy the Skywatcher, and J.P. possess something that he and the world badly need.

The accused, J.P., is a gentle man who can't tell time or temperature, but wants you to be happy. Is he also a killer? The bureaucracy judges him so and sends him to an institution for the criminally insane. His friends know that if they do not get him back he will wither and die.

Meanwhile, Jon has his own problems. He finds himself threatened not so much by disintegration as by normality--the meaningless of the mundane. Alive but trivial.

While searching for something to fill the emptiness and for a way to rescue his client and friend, Jon unexpectedly reconnects with his estranged wife, Zillah, and he has an unsettling encounter with an unusual nun who presents him a way of seeing the world that puzzles and intrigues him.

In this fourth and final entry in the Jon Mote Mysteries, our accidental sleuth and his sister Judy find themselves entangled in an international web of evil done and evil revenged. The often confused but always curious Jon finds himself the father of triplets and, for reasons not always clear even to himself, back in church. Judy, a woman with mental challenges but a heart as wide as the horizon, is now living with Jon and wife Zillah, helping them raise our children.

New to church, but somehow appointed to the Missions Committee (soon renamed the Care and Compassion Committee), Jon is asked to be the liaison with an immigrant family from Iraq the church wishes to aid. No one realizes that offering such help puts everyone in jeopardy, as evil done afar comes near to roost.

The cast of characters from past novels in the series reappears, including the band of residents from Judy's group home and the iron-willed theologian Sister Brigit. All are involved in this dramatic investigation into the nature of evil in the human experience and all contribute to Jon's stumbling but dogged pilgrimage toward greater wholeness.

The numbers are alarming--at least to people of faith. Many, especially the young, are leaving the church and abandoning faith in God. Social scientists have for decades been documenting with numbers what church leaders and families have experienced directly. What is much less noted and evaluated is the substantial number of those who leave faith and the church and eventually come back to both. Why people leave is an important question, but so is why people return--a question much less often addressed. Once people have made a clear and conscious break with their religious convictions and practice, what leads many to return? This book explores this important question primarily through listening to the stories these people tell. It relies on stories, not numbers, allowing people to tell their own stories in their own words--both why they left and why they returned. One discovers from listening to their stories that there are recurring patterns. People leave faith for common reasons and they also return for common reasons. In fact, many return for the flip side of why they left. The shared factor in all returns is God's relentless love for each of them.

Jon Mote-grad school dropout and serial failure-has been hired to investigate the murder of his erstwhile mentor, Richard Pratt, a star in the firmament of literary theory. Feeling unequal to the task, Mote skitters on the edge of madness, trying to stifle the increasingly threatening voices in his head. His only source of hope is the dogged love of his developmentally disabled sister, Judy, who serves as cheerleader, critic, and moral compass.

Death Comes for the Deconstructionist follows Mote and his sister through the streets and neighborhoods of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota-from crime scenes to the halls of academe. Mote's investigation uncovers a series of suspects-including the victim's wife, mistress, and intellectual rivals. Along the way he stumbles onto the victim's terrible secret, one that prompts the discovery of an equally dark mystery from his own past.

These revelations hasten Mote's descent into darkness, putting both him and Judy at grave risk. Death Comes for the Deconstructionist is a tragi-comic mystery, a detective story that is at once suspenseful, provocative, and emotionally resonant. It asks not only whodunit but whether truth is ultimately something we create rather than discover.

Dora-Mittelbau, a Nazi camp, forced thousands into deadly labor for secret weapons, culminating in the horrific Gardelegen massacre where 1,016 prisoners were killed.

In the history of Nazi concentration camps, and particularly labor camps, there is probably no place that bears the same stigma of wretchedness as 'Dora-Mittelbau' at Nordhausen. Located in the Harz mountains in central Germany, next to a quarry tunnel system in the Kohnstein mountain, it served to house thousands of slave workers for an underground factory known as the Mittelwerk, which produced three of Germany's best-known secret weapons: the V1 flying bomb, the V2 rocket and jet engines for the Me 262 and Ar 234 fighters. With over 20 kilometers of underground galleries, it was the largest underground factory in the world. Many of the inmates died in indescribable misery, being forced to extend the tunnels with meager equipment and under ghastly conditions, sometimes not seeing daylight for weeks on end. Started in August 1943, 'Dora-Mittelbau' in due course became the centre of a whole complex of underground factories in the Nordhausen area, with several subsidiary camps being set up. In all, of some 60,000 prisoners sent there between 1943 and 1945, 20,000 were driven to extinction to implement Nazi Germany's secret weapons program, but they labored late and in vain, for the products they yielded had little impact on the war. The V1 and V2 are the only weapons which cost more lives in production than in deployment: far more people died producing them than were killed from their impact in London, Antwerp and elsewhere.

The history of Nordhausen, already gruesome in itself, ended in a crescendo of violence when, in the final weeks of the war, the surviving inmates were evacuated from the camps in 'death marches'. One group of over a thousand men then became victim of one of the most horrendous of all Nazi atrocities. On April 13, 1945, just outside the town of Gardelegen, their SS camp guards, helped by local troops and Hitlerjugend, locked the prisoners in a big barn and set fire to the inside, burning those inside, killing them with hand-grenades, and shooting anyone who tried to escape from the burning, smoke-filled building. A total of 1,016 men died as a result. When discovered by American troops two days later, Gardelegen quickly became known as the site of one most notorious war crimes committed by the Nazis.

In this book, Karel Margry recounts the history of Nordhausen concentration camp and of the Gardelegen massacre in full detail. Both stories are illustrated with unique Then and Now comparison photographs.


The book contains the following two stories from ATB magazine:

Issue 101: Nordhausen
Author: Karel Margry, 118 black and white photos.

Issue 111: The Gardelegen Massacre
Author: Karel Margry, 78 black and white photos.

An examination of Bernard Montgomery's controversial leadership, focusing on his campaigns, personality, achievements, and relationships.

It seems fair to suggest that Bernard Law Montgomery remains a controversial and divisive figure, even fifty years after his death. Some see him as the greatest military commander and strategist of his generation, others as a deeply flawed character, solely responsible for all the ills that befell the troops under his command. In some estimates he was responsible for ponderous and overly cautious campaigning where he was unable or unwilling to admit to anything that might be construed as a failure. In others that he brilliantly conserved meagre manpower resources whilst overwhelming a series of consummate opponents.

Added into the mix is Montgomery's singular character. He seems able to engender some form of adoration in some and the deepest loathing in others. Certainly, he could come across as abrasive and egotistical, abrupt and inclined toward condescension. At the same time, he was a committed and dedicated professional soldier who was widely respected and adept at nurturing junior officers. This account, then, is an opportunity to look in-depth at the three pivotal years that took him from El Alamein to the Baltic and projected him to world attention. To achieve this the reader is guided through the environment in which his tactical headquarters operated, its organisation and equipment whilst overlaying the campaigns it fought and, most particularly, the sometimes fractious relationships on which much of the history that is handed down is based.

The 'Then' photos are an excellent selection and mainly consist of the work of British war photographers embedded in the attacking units, which gives them a vivid immediacy. The 'Now' photos offer a very interesting comparison... a useful and interesting book, and one to be recommended if you have an interest in WWII ground operations. - IPMS/USA

When the Allied armies broke out from the Normandy bridgehead in late July 1944, it became of paramount importance that they quickly capture new harbors to sustain the rapid northward advance. All the Allies' supplies and reinforcements were still coming in through just two places - the Mulberry artificial harbor at Arromanches and the port of Cherbourg captured by the Americans - and with supply lines lengthening by the day, it was essential to speedily open up ports nearer the armies. For Field-Marshal Montgomery's 21st Army Group this meant first of all the channel ports of Le Havre and Boulogne. Both cities had been declared a 'Festung' (Fortress) by Hitler and were to be defended to the last man.

The attack on Le Havre (Operation 'Astonia') was launched on September 10 and was a classic example of a successful set-piece battle. After the German defenses had been 'softened up' by colossal aerial and naval bombardment and artillery shelling, a 'siege-train' of specialized armor broke through the outer crust of the German defensive perimeter and allowed two British infantry divisions - the 49th (West Riding) Division and the 51st (Highland) Division - to push through the gap and methodically reduce the enemy strongholds before driving into the heart of the city. The attack on Boulogne (Operation 'Wellhit') began a week later and was the task of the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division. Another set-piece assault, it was again preceded by a devastating bombardment by RAF heavy bombers, which reduced large parts of the city to ruins, and a massive artillery barrage. Supported by specialized armor, two Canadian brigades then moved forward but the Germans resisted stubbornly and it took six days of heavy fighting before the Canadians had subdued all strongpoints and finally forced the garrison to surrender.

Although both ports were now in Allied hands, it brought no immediate alleviation to the Allies' logistical problems. Harbor installations had been extensively damaged by German demolitions and Allied bombardments and it would take many weeks of rehabilitation before the ports could be brought into use. Le Havre (which had meanwhile been assigned to the Americans) did not see the few first ships arriving until October 2 and Boulogne not until on October 12.

As is our hallmark, all phases of the battles for the two Channel ports are illustrated with Then and Now comparison photographs.

The book contains the following two stories from ATB magazine:

Issue 139: The Capture of Le Havre

Author: Karel Margry, 76 black & white photos.

Issue 86: Operation 'Wellhit' - The Capture of Boulogne

Author: Ian Galbraith, 80 black & white photos

A little regarded period of history, the inter-war years were crucial in forging the spirit and ethos of the Sharpshooters. At the time they were little more than a company-strength unit of the Territorial Army based in West London, with few resources, a paltry assortment of vehicles and a drill hall that had seen better days. What they did have in spades was spirit and enthusiasm. These were ordinary men in regular jobs from across London who were mainly seeking a little action and adventure at the weekend. As with any good military unit they had that extra spark that made them stand out.

This account details their training, their summer camps, the routine, and their equipment. Most of all it looks at the individuals who made up the unit and made it tick.

The 23rd (London) Armoured Car Company (Sharpshooters), as they were styled, was a leader in innovation and excellence, often called upon to train with the regular army. They provided escorts for food convoys during the General Strike, performed at the Royal Tournament, provided honour guards for Jubilees, Royal funerals and Coronations, and took on all manner of sporting activities, including two very active rugby teams. Towards the end of the 1930s they had begun to gear-up for war long before it became an inevitability, constantly recruiting over-strength and hiding the figures from their reluctant paymasters. When, at last, the likelihood of war was acknowledged they swiftly returned to full regimental strength and then immediately started raising a second line regiment.

...this book provides a great deal of photographic insight about the siege. ...there appears to be a wealth photographic history, much of which could serve as references needed by those modelers in dioramas and period staging for models themselves. - IPMS/USA

The siege of Leningrad was the longest ever endured by a modern city, and the deadliest siege in recorded history. It lasted for nearly 900 days, from late August 1941 to late January 1944, bringing unparalleled hardship to the population. Out of over three million persons in the city more than one million lost their lives through cold, disease and starvation, bombs and artillery fire. The severe winter of 1941-42 was by far the worst period of the siege, when food reserves ran out, rations dropped to a little over three ounces of bread per person per day and regular supplies of water, fuel, and electricity stopped. Its epic suffering and endurance earned Leningrad the title of 'Hero City of the Soviet Union'.

This book is from an article in issue 123 of After the Battle magazine, the joint authors were Karel Margry and Ron Hogg.

A young woman is dead. A man with diminished capacity is accused. His friends, also wounded, try to help him. In the process, they teach Jon Mote a thing or two he desperately needs to learn.

Jon no longer hears voices, but he's not convinced a silent universe is much better than a haunted one. He's returned his sister Judy to her group home and taken a staff job there that puts him in the company of six folks who, a bit rebelliously, he calls Specials.

Jon thinks his job is to teach these people basic life skills like telling time, making change, and riding the bus. The world says they are to be pitied, perhaps even eliminated. At best taken care of. But he finds that Judy, Ralph, Bonita, Jimmy, Billy the Skywatcher, and J. P. possess something that he and the world badly need.

The accused, J. P., is a gentle man who can't tell time or temperature, but wants you to be happy. Is he also a killer? The bureaucracy judges him so and sends him to an institution for the criminally insane. His friends know that if they do not get him back he will wither and die.

Meanwhile, Jon has his own problems. He finds himself threatened not so much by disintegration as by normality--the meaninglessness of the mundane. Alive but trivial.

While searching for something to fill the emptiness and for a way to rescue his client and friend, Jon unexpectedly reconnects with his estranged wife, Zillah, and he has an unsettling encounter with an unusual nun who presents him a way of seeing the world that puzzles and intrigues him.

This is a brilliantly crafted novel. Not only is Daniel Taylor a master of plot and subplot, but he also weaves threads together toward surprising and ironic revelations that delight and amaze. Yet his highest achievement may be the creation of a metonymic character who, in many ways, is a diagnostic for our culture and times. In this sequel (of sorts) to Death Comes for the Deconstructionist, Jon Mote the accidental detective returns in a distinctly nonacademic setting, not just to find out 'whodunit' but to discover the unexpected opening of his own being to real love--love in a new and revolutionary light. Don't miss this book!

--David Lyle Jeffrey, Distinguished Professor of Literature and Humanities, Baylor University

Daniel Taylor does it again, showing there is life after (his earlier) Death Comes for the Deconstructionist. Do We Not Bleed? reconstructs Jon and Judy Mote in ways that precipitate our laughter, inspire our imagination, and even prompt our thinking--about literature, philosophy, religion, theology, and life, no less--all the while helping us see that we are no more normal than Jon but certainly no less special than Judy and her friends. These two must-read novels leave us wondering how many more lives, and deaths, Jon and Judy Mote have left.

--Amos Yong, author of The Bible, Disability, and the Church

The prophetic spirit of Walker Percy infuses this unusual whodunit about a lost man stumbling unawares toward love in the ruins of both his own life and the postmodern world. As in his memorable debut, Daniel Taylor's disarmingly shrewd Christian humanism diagnoses the disorders characteristic of our time, and points the way toward healing.

--Rod Dreher, author of How Dante Can Save Your Life and The Little Way of Ruthie Leming

Praise for the first Jon Mote Mystery, Death Comes for the Deconstructionist, Christianity Today's 2016 Book Award Winner in Fiction:

. . . not only a highly engaging murder mystery but also a metaphysical page-turner.

--Paul J. Willis

Villers-Bocage has, for years, been the battle that confirmed the reputation of Germany's greatest tank ace, Michael Wittmann. In this book the battle is analyzed in depth for the first time through detailed examination of the images taken by war photographers after the town was captured by German forces. The claims made of the battle are re-appraised, and the arguments set out in dozens of published accounts have been compared with primary evidence never utilized before, and evaluated anew. Perhaps the two most striking ­revelations come from German sources. First, graphically, by the study of the 100 photographs taken by the Germans the day after the battle. Secondly, from Wittmann's own account which refutes many of the claims of historians attempting to glamorize the action.

In this, the third novel in the Jon Mote Mystery series, Jon and his special-needs sister, Judy, find more bodies showing up in their lives. This time it's Bible translators.

In Woe to the Scribes and Pharisees, Daniel Taylor's unique blend of wit, satire, drama, and provocative meditations on the Big Questions is once again on full display.

Jon Mote is determined to leave behind forever both the voices that once haunted him and his life-long confusion about the meaning of his life. He reconciles with his wife, Zillah, and takes a job as a book editor. When the publishing company that employs Jon decides to get in on the Bible-selling business, Jon finds himself in the last place in heaven or on earth that he would have expected: as a member of a Bible translation committee.

Knowing nothing about the Bible, the publisher assembles a team of translators based on the principles of diversity and name recognition. Wildly different understandings of nearly everything--theology, the meaning of texts, the direction of history, the nature of reality and of the church, among others--leads to take-no-prisoner clashes on issues large and small. While these surface tensions point to a profound collision of understandings of the cosmos and the human condition, Jon soon finds himself asking if they are also a matter of life and death.

Jon Mote--grad school dropout and serial failure--has been hired to investigate the murder of his erstwhile mentor, Richard Pratt, a star in the firmament of literary theory. Feeling unJon Mote--grad school dropout and serial failure--has been hired to investigate the murder of his erstwhile mentor, Richard Pratt, a star in the firmament of literary theory. Feeling unequal to the task, Mote skitters on the edge of madness, trying to stifle the increasingly threatening voices in his head. His only source of hope is the dogged love of his developmentally disabled sister, Judy, who serves as cheerleader, critic, and moral compass. Death Comes for the Deconstructionist follows Mote and his sister through the streets and neighborhoods of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota--from crime scenes to the halls of academe. Mote's investigation uncovers a series of suspects--including the victim's wife, mistress, and intellectual rivals. Along the way he stumbles onto Pratt's terrible secret, one that prompts the discovery of an equally dark mystery from his own past. These revelations hasten Mote's descent into darkness, putting both him and Judy at grave risk. Death Comes for the Deconstructionist is a tragicomic mystery, a detective story that is at once suspenseful, provocative, and emotionally resonant. It asks not only whodunit but whether truth is ultimately something we create rather than discover. equal to the task, Mote skitters on the edge of madness, trying to stifle the increasingly threatening voices in his head. His only source of hope is the dogged love of his developmentally disabled sister, Judy, who serves as cheerleader, critic, and moral compass. Death Comes for the Deconstructionist follows Mote and his sister through the streets and neighborhoods of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota--from crime scenes to the halls of academe. Mote's investigation uncovers a series of suspects--including the victim's wife, mistress, and intellectual rivals. Along the way he stumbles onto Pratt's terrible secret, one that prompts the discovery of an equally dark mystery from his own past. These revelations hasten Mote's descent into darkness, putting both him and Judy at grave risk. Death Comes for the Deconstructionist is a tragicomic mystery, a detective story that is at once suspenseful, provocative, and emotionally resonant. It asks not only whodunit but whether truth is ultimately something we create rather than discover. Daniel Taylor blends a passion for theology, civil rights, and the saving grace of story in a mystery involving an unlikely pair of underdog investigators--the psychologically broken Jon Mote and his ever hopeful, developmentally challenged older sister, Judy. Known primarily for his nonfiction books, Taylor displays the natural skills of a crime writer in his debut novel set in the world of academia. His plot begins conventionally, but eventually evolves into something much deeper. Death Comes for the Deconstructionist is a fascinating exploration of what is ultimately good and true, a perfect choice for Slant's first offering in the detective genre. --Naomi Hirahara, Edgar Award-winning author of the Mas Arai and Officer Ellie Rush mysteries This whodunit from Dan Taylor is a cause for celebration. His Jon Mote rivals Harry Bosch, and Taylor's ventures into literature, religion, and notions of progress shine, challenge, and stun. With his remarkable sidekick, Judy, Jon Mote, an expert on things he wished he didn't know, is not simply looking into a puzzling death. He is exploring his own odds of finding transformative life. Great books are those that force readers to reexamine the very ground on which they stand. Death Comes for the Deconstructionist is such a book--a luminous performance. --Dale Brown, Director of Buechner Institute In Death Comes for the Deconstructionist, Daniel Taylor has written not only a highly engaging murder mystery but also a me