Books by G K Chesterton

Book SynopsisWith an Introduction by David Stuart Davies. Father Brown, one of the most quirkily genial and lovable characters to emerge from English detective fiction, first made his appearance in The Innocence of Father Brown in 1911. That first collection of stories established G.K. Chesterton's kindly cleric in the front rank of eccentric sleuths. This complete collection contains all the favourite Father Brown stories, showing a quiet wit and compassion that has endeared him to many, whilst solving his mysteries by a mixture of imagination and a sympathetic worldliness in a totally believable manner.

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Book SynopsisG.K. Chesterton''s The Man Who Was Thursday is a thrilling novel of deception, subterfuge, double-crossing and secret identities, and this Penguin Classics edition is edited with an introduction by Matthew Beaumont.The Central Anarchist Council is a secret society sworn to destroy the world. The council is governed by seven men, who hide their identities behind the names of the days of the week. Yet one of their number - Thursday - is not the revolutionary he claims to be, but a Scotland Yard detective named Gabriel Syme, sworn to infiltrate the organisation and bring the architects of chaos to justice. But when he discovers another undercover policeman on the Council, Syme begins to question his role in their operations. And as a desperate chase across Europe begins, his confusion grows, as well as his confidence in his ability to outwit his enemies, unravelling the mysteries of human behaviour and belief in a thrilling contest of wits. But he has still to face the greatest terror that the Council has: a man named Sunday, whose true nature is worse than Syme could ever have imagined ...In his introduction, Matthew Beaumont examines the book''s themes of identity and confrontation, and explores its intriguing title. This edition also contains a chronology, notes and suggested further reading.G.K. Chesterton (1874-1938) attended the Slade School of Art, where he appears to have suffered a nervous breakdown, before turning his hand to journalism. A prolific writer throughout his life, his best-known books include The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1922) and the Father Brown stories. Chesterton converted to Roman Catholicism in 1922 and died in 1938. If you enjoyed The Man Who Was Thursday, you might enjoy Joseph Conrad''s The Secret Agent, also available in Penguin Classics.''The most thrilling book I have ever read''Kingsley Amis, author of Lucky JimTrade Review"A powerful picture of the loneliness and bewilderment which each of us encounters in his single-handed struggle with the universe."--C. S. Lewis

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Book SynopsisTwo of G. K. Chesterton's most important and well-known works are contained in this volume: Heretics, and Orthodoxy. In Heretics, Chesterton addresses the intellectual movements of his time that he considered most prominent and destructive. Chesterton confronts relativism, individualism, neo-paganism, and other trends of the modern period, paying special attention to the artists and intellectual elite of his time. Orthodoxy, a classic that is part memoir, part apologetic. It exhibits Chesterton at his finest--a combination of literary wit, theological acumen, and pointed cultural critique. The two works complement each other perfectly, providing an accessible entry point to the battleground of truth and falsehood.Lexham Classics are beautifully typeset new editions of classic works. Each book has been carefully transcribed from the original texts, ensuring an accurate representation of the writing as the author intended it to be read.

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Book SynopsisThe complete adventures of the well-loved clerical sleuth, collected in one brilliant volume.Shabby and lumbering, with a face like a Norfolk dumpling, Father Brown makes for an improbable super-sleuth. But his innocence is the secret of his success: refusing the scientific method of detection, he adopts instead an approach of simple sympathy, interpreting each crime as a work of art, and each criminal as a man no worse than himself. This complete edition brings together all of the Father Brown stories, including two not previously available in Penguin: ''The Donnington Affair'', in which Chesterton rises to the challenge of solving a murder-mystery half written by someone else (Max Pemberton), and ''The Mask of Midas'', which was found in Chesterton''s papers after his death. It also includes an introduction and notes by Michael D. Hurley.G.K. Chesteron was born in 1874. He attended the Slade School of Art, where he appears to have suffered a nervous breakdow

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Book SynopsisPhilip Yancey's 'desert island book'!

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Book SynopsisG. K. Chesterton''s surreal masterpiece is a psychological thriller that centers on seven anarchists in turn-of-the-century London who call themselves by the names of the days of the week. Chesterton explores the meanings of their disguised identities in what is a fascinating mystery and, ultimately, a spellbinding allegory. As Jonathan Lethem remarks in his Introduction, The real characters are the ideas. Chesterton''s nutty agenda is really quite simple: to expose moral relativism and parlor nihilism for the devils he believes them to be. This wouldn''t be interesting at all, though, if he didn''t also show such passion for giving the devil his due. He animates the forces of chaos and anarchy with every ounce of imaginative verve and rhetorical force in his body.

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Book SynopsisTo celebrate the 100th anniversary of G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown mysteries, BBC One Daytime has commissioned a new 10-part drama series for January 2013 to bring the priest-turned-detective back to life. BBC Books will be publishing a new edition of the original and complete short stories to tie-in to transmission.Set in the early-twentieth century, Father Brown's world is quintessentially English; crime scenes await in country houses, rural parish churches and quaint gardens as well as foggy London streets and shadowy railway stations. Father Brown may be a kindly cleric, but his bumbling nature disguises a detective mind to rival Sherlock Holmes... The character of Father Brown, brought to life by Mark Williams, is based on a real parish priest and the idea that priests, through hearing Confession, know the worst of human nature more than anyone, including the police. Father Brown uses his experiences to put himself into the mind of the criminal to solve each mystery and catch the perpetrators.

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Book SynopsisThe first one-volume reader of the best of G. K. Chesterton’s writing in the full range of genres he mastered.Chesterton was a towering literary figure of the early twentieth century, accomplished and prolific in many literary forms. A forceful proponent of Christianity and a critic of both conservatism and liberalism, he set out to describe nothing less than the spiritual journey of humanity in Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man, his most enduring books. He is famous as well for his beloved Father Brown detective stories, his satirical and comic verse, his profoundly witty paradoxes and aphorisms, and his penetrating studies of such figures as Charles Dickens, St. Francis of Assisi, and St. Thomas Aquinas. The Everyman Chesterton contains samples of his poems, stories, essays, and biographies, as well as the influential works of religious, political, and social thought in which he championed the common man and for which he is most admired.Tabl

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Book SynopsisG.K. Chesterton was born in 1874 and educated at St Paul's School in London. After two unfinished degrees in both illustration and literature, he became an artist, columnist, arts critic and prolific writer. The religious esotericism of his youth increasingly gave way to orthodox Christianity, and he converted to Roman Catholicism in 1922, going on to become Knight Commander with Star of the Papal Order of St. Gregory the Great. A very large man of 6'4" and 21 stone, Chesterton also had a 'colossal genius' according to his friend George Bernard Shaw - and his work, particularly The Man Who Was Thursday and the Father Brown stories, has had an astounding impact on English fiction. Chesterton died of heart failure in his home in 1936, and was given a Requiem Mass in Westminster Cathedral.

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Book SynopsisA new selection of the much-loved Father Brown stories, now part of the Penguin English Library''No man''s really any good till he knows how bad he is, or might be''With his round, unassuming face, his pipe and umbrella, the bumbling priest Father Brown makes for an improbable detective. Yet his innocent air hides a piercing understanding of the criminal mind, and a boundless knowledge of human nature. This selection brings together some of the best of G. K. Chesterton's beloved stories, in which we see the clerical sleuth foiling a jewel thief in London, solving a macabre mystery in a Scottish castle and unravelling dark deeds in a sleepy English suburb. With a beautiful new cover design by award-winning designer Coralie Bickford-Smith and presented in the delightful Penguin English Library series, this new selection brings together the very best of the Father Brown stories, inviting new readers to discover one of the most unforgettable characters in literature.

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Book SynopsisLondon, 1984. England has given up on democracy and selects its rulers by lottery. This time it is the turn of clerk Auberon Quin, a prankster who decrees that each borough of London become an independent mediaeval state, complete with costumes and coats of arms. The citizens bear his joke with varying levels of patience until Adam Wayne, the intractable Provost of Notting Hill, sword in hand, takes the game far too seriously.First published in 1904, G. K. Chesterton''s deliriously eccentric debut novel is a wild, topsy-turvy satire on a land ruled by fools.

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Book SynopsisA satire set in a future England, in which a neomedievalist contest among London neighborhoods takes a disastrous turn.When Auberon Quin, a prankster nostalgic for Merrie Olde England, becomes king of that country in 1984, he mandates that each of London’s neighborhoods become an independent state, complete with unique local costumes. Everyone goes along with the conceit until young Adam Wayne, a born military tactician, takes the game too seriously . . . and becomes the Napoleon of Notting Hill. War ensues throughout the city—fought with sword and halberd!G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) was an English author, poet, critic, and newspaper columnist known for his brilliant, epigrammatic paradoxes. His best-known character is the priest-detective Father Brown, featured in over fifty stories published between 1910 and 1936, who solves mysteries and crimes thanks to his understanding of spiritual and philosophic truths; and his best-known nove

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Book SynopsisG.K. Chesterton's brilliant sketch of the life and thought of Thomas Aquinas is as relevant today as when it was published in 1933. Then it earned the praise of such distinguished writers as Etienne Gilson, Jacques Martain, and Anton Pegis as the best book ever written on the great thirteenth-century Dominican. Today Chesterton's classic stands poised to reveal Thomas to a new generation. Chesterton's Aquinas is a man of mystery. Born into a noble Neapolitan family, Thomas chose the life of a mendicant friar. Lumbering and shy -- his classmates dubbed him the Dumb Ox -- he led a revolution in Christian thought. Possessed of the rarest brilliance, he found the highest truth in the humblest object. Having spent his life amid the vast intricacies of reason, he asked on his deathbed to have read aloud the Song of Songs, the most passionate book in the Bible.As Albert the Great, Thomas's teacher, predicted, the Dumb Ox has bellowed down the ages to our own day. Chesterton

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Book SynopsisA group of anarchists are under surveillance by Scotland Yard in Chesterton''s hugely popular metaphysical thriller. The Supreme Anarchists Council is dedicated to overthrowing the world order. To keep their identities a secret, each of them has been named a day of the week. Gabriel Syme, an eccentric poet, is recruited by Scotland Yard to infiltrate the group. He tracks down the six men and manages to win a place on the council. But in a bizarre and surreal twist of events, Syme realises that five of the six members are not at all what they seem . . .Trade ReviewGloriously entertaining * Simon Hammond, The Guardian *

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Book SynopsisG. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown may seem a pleasantly doddering Roman Catholic priest, but appearances deceive. With keen observation and an unerring sense of man’s frailties-gained during his years listening to confessions-Father Brown succeeds in bringing even the most elusive criminals to justice. This definitive collection of fifteen stories, selected by the American Chesterton Society, includes such classics as “The Blue Cross,” “The Secret Garden,” and “The Paradise of Thieves.” As P. D. James writes in her Introduction, “We read the Father Brown stories for a variety pleasures, including their ingenuity, their wit and intelligence, and for the brilliance of the writing. But they provide more. Chesterton was concerned with the greatest of all problems, the vagaries of the human heart.”

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Book SynopsisA classic of Christian apologeticsPart spiritual autobiography, part apologetics, Orthodoxy is G.K. Chesterton''s account of his own journey to faith. Chesterton didn't set out to write a defense of Christian thought, instead he hoped to recount how he personally became a believer. However, in doing so, he penned one of the great classics of Christian writing, a book that has influenced countless people and continues to speak compellingly to our modern day. Chesterton writes about his journey of faith with wit, charm, and a razor-sharp intellect, undermining casual assumptions and lazy speculations in a relentless search for truth and meaning. Orthodoxy is the next title in the Essential Wisdom Library, a series of books that seeks to bring spiritual wisdomboth modern and ancientto today's readers. Featuring a foreword by Jon Sweeney, this new edition of the classic text is a must read for seekers and believers alike.

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