Pope Francis trusted the imagination and regarded it as a gift from God. Instead of being suspicious and fearful of its power, he urged artists to follow its promptings.

Growing old isn’t something to be feared, but rather something to embrace as a time of grace in one’s life, Pope Francis wrote in a preface for a book that was not released before he died.

Pope Francis was a great lover of literature: He peppered his homilies, talks and even encyclicals with literary references from Dostoyevsky, Proust, Hopkins, Dante and more, and he also encouraged his flock to read broadly and often.

In 'Stranger Than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel, Edwin Frank explores how reality has been presented and even transformed through the way it is molded in fiction—and how the novel evolved from the 19th century novel to that of the 20th century.

There is joy and heartbreak in Father Charles Strobel's memoir, 'The Kingdom of the Poor,' but mostly joy.

If what we need now is the kind of story that restores wonder to the world, Tara Isabella Burton's 'Here in Avalon' provides one avenue to that destination.