The world of family with its mundane dramas and its ordinary victories is sometimes perceived as the domain of light or lesser fiction. Important literature calls for a broader scope and greater passions than the familial. Minutiae, it seems, is the enemy of literary excellence. This attitude to literature is particularly irksome to Canadian novelist, Carol Shields. A writer of ten novels and a collection of plays, short stories and poetry anthologies, she has often been relegated to the sunny end of fiction. Her latest, and probably last, novel Unless takes issue with this criticism of miniaturists and particularly the exclusion of women writers from major collections.

I wonder what response there would have been had Harper Lee written a second novel. Would the grace and simple brilliance of To Kill A Mockingbird have hampered the success of anything further. What else could live up to that high standard? Or perhaps the driving success of her first novel would carry her second along. But such suggestions are merely speculative. She never wrote another book.

In 578 AD a monk named John Moschos travelled throughout the Byzantine Empire to determine the health of the Christian faith. His travelogue was called The Spiritual Meadow. In 1994, some fourteen centuries after John Moschos began his journey, Scottish travel writer William Dalrymple set out on a similar trip. Following in the monk’s footsteps as closely as possible, Dalrymple spent several months travelling through the Mediterranean and the Middle East. His journey – which began in a monastery in Greece – took him through Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Egypt.

David Marr is one of Sydney’s best known and highly acclaimed journalists. The High Price of Heaven is a collection of a dozen essays mainly based on his recent newspaper features, and loosely connected by their common criticism of the Christian churches.

I really wish I had written this book. Not because it’s a timeless piece of literature, but because it would have been so much fun to write. Any project that involves watching over 150 episodes of The Simpsons, as Mark Pinsky did for this book, must be as good as it gets.

Kirsten Birkett's book The Essence of Feminism is another product of their Modern Beliefs Series. This is an interesting and very useful publication which I would encourage women, and men, to purchase and read.

A display at the Australian Museum in Sydney proudly proclaims that ‘Evolution is a fact’. Christian author, Professor Phillip E. Johnson, calls it ‘the creation myth of our culture’ and refers to evolutionists as the modern day ‘priesthood’ who claim to ‘hold the secrets of the creation story’. Theologian Colin Brown calls evolution, ‘by far the most potent single factor to undermine popular belief in the existence of God in modern times’.

The Colour of Water is a delightful, rewarding read. The story of James McBride, a black American, and his mother, a white Jewish refugee, it is a remarkable exploration of family, of identity, of race and of faith. With an honest, engaging style, McBride tells his story of growing up.