The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything:

The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything: A Spirituality for Real Life By: James Martin, SJ
Non-fiction: religion 406 pages
Book Count: 38

This book is about the spiritual practices of the Jesuits and of course St. Ignatius of Loyola who founded the Jesuits.  It includes information on: the six paths to God, the examen, imaginative prayer/contemplation, lectio divina, centering prayer, the colloquy, how the vows that Jesuits (and other religious orders) take can be useful in anyone's' life, decision making methods, and the contemplative in action.  Peppered throughout the book are also a lot of stories about the author's life, the lives of people that he knows, and  famous Jesuits including a lot of ones about the first members of the society of Jesus. These stories are used as a way of showing how the ideas that he is talking about work in real life, or to give an example of some idea that he is talking about.  And of course there are a number of jokes about the Jesuits like every other book by the author that I have read.

No mid-month books:

FYI: For those of you that know my schedule you will understand that I have not finished any books in the last fortnight so I will have no post until later in the month (hopefully!)

Death Comes to Town:

Death Comes to Town By: K. J. Emrick
Fiction: Mystery, e- book

First, I have to say, if you can talk with dead people, I would think you wouldn't have such a hard time solving murders.  But that is apparently not the case as the main character in this book series can talk to the dead and have visions of what happened to them, but still can not solve the case any faster then non-physic detectives.
Besides her surprisingly unhelpful abilities this story is a normal cozy mystery about a book seller whose friend/ neighbor and ex were killed, and who fears that they are the next on the killers list.  And so they decide to find the killer before they find her.

Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel's Secret War:

Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel's Secret War By: Hal Vaughan
Non-fiction: Biography 222 pages
Book Count: 37

This book is a biography of Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel dealing largely with her life as it related to WWII, a time that many of her other biographies gloss over. Most do this as she actively tried to hide her activities during the war after it and because many of the files and information about that time were lost, destroyed or ended up in the USSR after the war.   It turns out that the famous French fashion designer was also a spy for the Nazis during WWII.  Although the book points out in many spots that she was an extreme anti-Semite, which they claim is do to her religious upbringing with no reason given why she would be more an anti-Semite  then others with similar upbringing, her spying had little to do with her thoughts on the Nazis as a whole.  She did try to use the laws of France when under the German control to get control of her perfume business back, but that was due to a bad business deal and not because of the religion of the owners.  Largely she was a spy in order to help out her friends and family during the war and because her current lover at the time was a top level German spy.  Besides seeing a part of the life of a famous person that you would never expect, this book does a good job of showing how interconnected many of the top people on both sides of the war were with each other.