In the Fullness of Time: A story from the past and future of the church by Paul Bradbury (Canterbury Press, £14.99 (Church Times SPECIAL OFFER PRICE £11.99); 978-1-78622-607-5).

“This is a book about the present and future of the church in our own challenging context; a secular age, decline, stretched resources, complex and fragmented communities requiring diverse missional approaches.

“Weaving together parable, storytelling, travelogue history and poetry, Paul Bradbury journeys from rural Norfolk to inner-city London, from a radical missional community in Lincolnshire, to a traditional village parish in Dorset, to explore what the church looks like today, and how local parish communities are wrestling with the tensions between the value of inherited church, and the need to look to the future.”

A Philosophy of Prayer: Nothingness, language, and hope by George Pattison (Fordham, £25.99 (£23.39); 978-1-5315-0683-4).

“A Philosophy of Prayer explores prayer within the perspective of post-Kantian philosophy. Against a background of traditional sources, including Augustine, The Cloud of Unknowing, and the seventeenth-century French school of spirituality, the book uses Schleiermacher, Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Heidegger, Berdyaev, Tillich, Marcel, Simone Weil, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jean- Louis Chrétien to provide an interpretation of what is meant by the passivity and self-annihilation of the praying self, suggesting an “apophatics of the personality.”

Signal Fire: A guide to putting prayer into practice by Martin Saunders (SPCK, £11.99 (£10.79); 978-0-281-09033-4).

“Signal Fire explores the myriad of different ways in which we can connect with God, both together and alone. This handy guide provides opportunities to try out different aspects of prayer, equipping young people with a prayer life of their own.”

Selected by Frank Nugent, of the Church House Bookshop, which operates the Church Times Bookshop.