A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is grey. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them

To rendezvous with her archeologist fiance in Jordan, Barbara Vaughn must first pass through the Mandelbaum Gate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbaum_Gate), which divides strife-torn Jerusalem. A half-jewish convert to Catholicism, an Englishwoman of strong and stubborn convictions, Barbara will not be dissuaded from her ill-timed pilgrimage despite a very real threat of bodily harm and the fearful admonishments

The Devil’s Advocate, Morris West’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_West) best-selling novel of 1959, is a deft exploration of the meaning of faith. In an impoverished village in southern Italy, the life and death of Giacamo Nerone has inspired talk of saint­hood. Father Blaise Meredith, a dying English priest, is sent from the Vatican to investigate — and to try

The mass of men, Thoreau (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoreau) said in 1854, lead lives of quiet desperation; and in Rose Tremain’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Tremain and http://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/may/10/featuresreviews.guardianreview5) novels that mundane despair is laid bare. What she loves to probe is the inevitable space, whether a tiny crack or a gaping abyss, between desire and its realisation. When Larry Kendal began to build his pool