Author Description

Masterplots II: Christian Literature compiles summary-analyses of 502 titles. Of these, 45 have been updated from previous Salem publications. The remainder, 457 essays, are completely new, written for this publication. Masterplots II: Christian Literature captures the entire breadth of Christian literature--both fiction and nonfiction--by selecting more than 500 of the greatest and most representative works identified with the genre. At the core of this list are the fiction and nonfiction "classics" to which most students and general readers--Christian or secular--will be exposed at some time in their lives, from Saint Augustine's Confessions to John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress to Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series, and C.S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters and Narnia chronicles.^ While several of the titles were not written exclusively for a Christian audience, all works covered in these volumes have been consulted, examined, taught, or analyzed from a Christian perspective. Many of the titles in our list, however, overtly emphasize the Christian experience, and in many cases, these works were written expressly for the purpose of addressing Christian concerns or simply providing a good "Christian read." The scope is broad not only generically but also temporally and geographically, with works by authors as diverse as John Samuel Mbiti, Gustavo Gutǐrrez, Immacuľe Ilibagiza, J.N.K. Mugambi, and Fumitaka Matsuoka and dates of publication ranging from Christian times to the twenty-first century.^ Titles in all the major genres are included: drama, from Everyman to Jesus Christ Superstar; poetry, from "The Dream of the Rood" to Mark Jarman's Questions for Ecclesiastes and Scott Cairns's Philokalia; and representative titles from the best writers of Christian genre fiction, including romance, mystery, end-times, and science fiction. We have not avoided contemporary and often controversial blockbusters such as Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code and Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins's Left Behind series; their best-seller status testifies to the continuing and growing interest in Christian spirituality and the Christian literature that supports it. Clearly, any such list is highly selective--and subjective--defined as the "best" and most representative of the vast number of works now appropriated as Christian literature.^ It is our hope that these titles will meet librarians' and readers' needs as among those most likely to be known, asked for, and studied by both general readers and secondary and college-level students in a variety of courses, from literature and to the history of religion. - Publisher.