Two new novels to read!

From the Manse..........

By the time October has arrived, I will have purchased two books that are currently on my wish list – waiting for them to be published.

Richard Osman's latest novel, "The Last Devil to Die" (published 14th September) and the seventh instalment of the Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacot series by Robert Galbraith, "The Running Grave": published on 26th September.

Having read the previous three and six novels respectively, I am full of anticipation as to these latest offerings.

Whilst there is certainly the thrill of escaping into new plots and story lines that are ready to be solved and unravelled – there is just as importantly, the further development of the characters to look forward to. Indeed, you need both elements to make the books worth reading.

For if you do not learn anything new about the people you've grown to know and care for and they simply stay the same, then it would be rather dull and boring and I would suggest, not worth investing your time and effort in.

The characters are obviously affected by what happens within the story itself but also by what life in general has to throw at them.

The protagonists as they appear in books four and seven are now very different to how we first met them in "Thursday Murder Club" and "The Cuckoo's Calling" and that's as it should be.

As in fiction, so too in life, for we are all now very different to what we once were.

Whilst time and circumstance have certainly helped to shape and change us as we have reacted to what has come our way, both good and bad, it is God who has been at work in our lives.

For as the prophet Isaiah reminds us, God is like a potter and we, his clay. Day by day, through the power and presence of his Holy Spirit, he continually changes, moulds and shapes us so that we are changed from who we are to who he calls us to be.

When Jesus, first met Peter, he said to him; "You are Simon son of John. You will be called Cephas"
You are, you will be – or, as Charles Wesley put it; "Changed form glory into glory"

Happy reading!

With love and God Bless

Keith