American author Philip Yancey teaches Susan Corcoran a thing or two about grace.

'Old and new wars: organized violence in a global era' by Mary Kaldor: Blackwell Publishers, 1999, £12.99

In the clear frosty pre-dawn of 17 November I was watching the Leonid meteor shower. Not far away a tawny owl was calling. Pieces of comet debris blazing trails through the earth's atmosphere, and a hunter able to catch mice in near darkness--wonders of physics and biology.

Jean Brown eavesdrops on relationship between two 'large souls'-- and comes home to herself.

Thousands of years ago, some of the earth's peoples developed societies which poured forth, displacing other peoples. Bryan Hamlin discovers that their success had more to do with beans than with brains.

'The Politics of Hope' by Jonathan Sacks: Jonathan Cape, 1997, £15.99

'Invisible Allies' by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The Harvill Press, 1997, £9.99

After 50 years of Independence, Rajmohan Gandhi reconsiders his grandfather's widsom - opening up a source of hope for further healing with Britain, and within the divisions of the whole sub-contintent.

'Islam and the Myth of Confrontation - religion and politics in the Middle East' by Fred Halliday, IB Tauris £12.95

Apartheid has broken homes, broken trust, broken people. But its greatest effect has been on the South African psyche - and that is where the toughest battle will have to take place.