From London to Cornwall, then to Italy and France, a short, shabby priest runs down bandits, traitors, and killers. Why is he so successful?After many years spent in the priesthood, Father Brown knows human nature and is not afraid of its dark side. Thus he understands criminal motivation and how to deal with it.The stories included are "The Paradise of Thieves," "The Duel of Dr. Hirsch," "The Man in the Passage," "The Mistakes of the Machine," "The Head of the Caesar," "The Purple Wig," "The Perishing of the Pendragons," "The God of the Gongs," "The Salad of the Colonel Cray," "The Strange...

The brilliant G. K. Chesterton examines a variety of human "types," including the Fool, the Miser, the Mystagogue, the Separatist, the Aristocrat, and 33 more. A fascinating study of human nature from one who had eyes to see. Newly designed and typeset by Waking Lion Press.

Includes The Innocence of Father Brown and The Wisdom of Father Brown. Newly designed and typeset in a modern 6-by-9-inch format by Waking Lion Press.

Includes The Incredulity of Father Brown, The Secret of Father Brown, and The Scandal of Father Brown. Newly designed and typeset in a modern 6-by-9-inch format by Waking Lion Press.

Easily the darkest of Chesterton's Father Brown collections, The Secret of Father Brown is nonetheless a masterwork of perception of the human condition, explored through the usual impossible crimes and a parade of rogues and saints--a corpse in shining armor, a thieving mystic, insouciant British aristocrats, and a Canadian journalist. We are asked to solve death by duel and pistol shot, and thefts of jewels large and small. The stories in this collection are worth reading over and over--to see how the plot unfolds, and to enjoy Chesterton's gorgeous and well-informed prose. Includes the...

A book of modern social inquiry has a shape that is somewhat sharply defined. It begins as a rule with an analysis, with statistics, tables of population, decrease of crime among Congregationalists, growth of hysteria among policemen, and similar ascertained facts; it ends with a chapter that is generally called "The Remedy." It is almost wholly due to this careful, solid, and scientific method that "The Remedy" is never found. (excerpt from "What's Wrong with the World")

Alone at some distance from the wasting walls of a disused abbey I found half sunken in the grass the grey and goggle-eyed visage of one of those graven monsters that made the ornamental water-spouts in the cathedrals of the Middle Ages. It lay there, scoured by ancient rains or striped by recent fungus, but still looking like the head of some huge dragon slain by a primeval hero. And as I looked at it, I thought of the meaning of the grotesque, and passed into some symbolic reverie of the three great stages of art.

I cannot understand the people who take literature seriously; but I can love them, and I do. Out of my love I warn them to keep clear of this book. It is a collection of crude and shapeless papers upon current or rather flying subjects; and they must be published pretty much as they stand. They were written, as a rule, at the last moment; they were handed in the moment before it was too late, and I do not think that our commonwealth would have been shaken to its foundations if they had been handed in the moment after. They must go out now, with all their imperfections on their head, or rather...

Once upon a time there lived upon an island a merry and innocent people, mostly shepherds and tillers of the earth. They were republicans, like all primitive and simple souls; they talked over their affairs under a tree, and the nearest approach they had to a personal ruler was a sort of priest or white witch who said their prayers for them. They worshi-pped the sun, not idolatrously, but as the golden crown of the god whom all such infants see almost as plainly as the sun. Now this priest was told by his people to build a great tower, pointing to the sky in salutation of the Sun-god;...

I cannot understand the people who take literature seriously; but I can love them, and I do. Out of my love I warn them to keep clear of this book. It is a collection of crude and shapeless papers upon current or rather flying subjects; and they must be published pretty much as they stand. They were written, as a rule, at the last moment; they were handed in the moment before it was too late, and I do not think that our commonwealth would have been shaken to its foundations if they had been handed in the moment after. They must go out now, with all their imperfections on their head, or rather...