Thomas Merton’s Holistic Spirituality by Patrick F. O’Connell (Liturgical Press, £23.99 (£21.59); 979-8-4008-0268-3)

“In Thomas Merton’s Holistic Spirituality, renowned Merton scholar Patrick F. O’Connell shares the fruit of decades of reading, reflecting, speaking, and writing about this captivating monastic figure. He explores the full range of the prolific Cistercian’s diverse contributions to contemporary Christian life and thought, unified by his conviction that “We must contain all divided worlds in ourselves and transcend them in Christ.” This commitment to integrating seemingly disparate concerns and interests, the historical with the contemporary, the spiritual with the secular, contemplative prayer with prophetic critique, monastic stability with life-long pilgrimage, constitutes what O’Connell names as Merton’s holistic spirituality.”

Cornwall’s Saints by Joanna Mattingly (Amberley, £15.99 (£14.39); 978-1-3981-2278-9)

“Cornwall has more varied saints’ dedications than any other county. In addition to the usual saints found in the rest of the country and the wider Christian world, more than 140 Brittonic or local saints have been identified here. Saints are identified with sites across Cornwall – from churches, chapels, crosses and holy wells, to guilds, stores, lights and natural features. Conventional Roman-approved saints such as St Peter and St Paul vie with St Lallu and St Neot, Brittonic saints shared with Wales, Brittany and Cornwall – evidenced by the county’s joint patron saints, St Michael and St Petroc, now St Piran. A rich tapestry of holy places, customs and beliefs associated with these saints developed in Cornwall, which can still be discerned visually in the county today.”

Blood Theology: Seeing red in body-and God-talk by Eugene F. Rogers (Cambridge University Press, £22.99 (£20.69); 978-1-108-82418-7). New in paperback

“The unsettling language of blood has been invoked throughout the history of Christianity. But until now there has been no truly sustained treatment of how Christians use blood to think with. Eugene F. Rogers Jr. discusses in his much-anticipated new book the sheer, surprising strangeness of Christian blood-talk, exploring the many and varied ways in which it offers a language where Christians cooperate, sacrifice, grow and disagree. He asks too how it is that blood-talk dominates when other explanations would do, and how blood seeps into places where it seems hardly to belong.” 

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