Last Words by Richard Holloway (Swift Press, £16.99 (Church Times SPECIAL OFFER PRICE £13.59); 978-1-80075-533-8).

“Richard Holloway has been the archetypal 'turbulent priest'. Having risen to be the Primus (Head) of the Scottish Episcopal Church, he abandoned religion and ecclesiastical office to fight for the rights of minorities and to write a string of best selling books, most famously Leaving Alexandria. He also became Chairman of the Scottish Arts Council. This book opens and ends with chapters of a philosophical kind in which he explains how he lost belief in a loving God and became true to himself.”

Choosing Love: What LGBTQ+ Christians can teach us all about relationships, inclusion, and justice by Dawne Moon and Theresa W. Tobin (OUP, £22.99 (£20.69); 978-0-19-777651-3).

“Dawne Moon and Theresa W. Tobin show how a number of LGBTQ+ Christians and their heterosexual/cisgender allies are working to make their families, churches, and communities more inclusive, loving, and just. In telling their stories, Choosing Love shares lessons about what it means to be human, relational beings who need mutual connection to thrive.”

Dante the Theologian by Denys Turner (Cambridge University Press, £22.99 (£20.69); 978-1-009-16869-4). New in paperback

“An understanding of Dante the theologian as distinct from Dante the poet has been neglected in an appreciation of Dante’s work as a whole. That is the starting-point of this vital new book. In giving theology fresh centrality, the author argues that theologians themselves should find, when they turn to Dante Alighieri, a compelling resource: whether they do so as historians of fourteenth-century Christian thought, or as interpreters of the religious issues of our own times.”


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