About the series

Six short novels, a prequel and an omnibus, telling the events of the Passion from the outside — through the people standing at the edges of it, who mostly did not understand what they were watching until much later.

Each book takes one witness and gives them the whole of a life: a childhood, a trade, a family, a set of reasons, and one afternoon that undoes all of it. Each is three or four hours’ reading. Each stands alone.

Because they close the loopholes, one at a time, in order.

A thief saved with empty hands — the world can nearly believe that, because the thief was small and had nothing. A soldier saved with the blood still wet on his hands — harder, but he was only following orders, and someone was always going to be holding the spear. A murderer who gave the orders to himself, for whom a cross had been particularly built, who stood on a pavement and watched another man carry it up the hill — if grace reaches him, there is nobody left outside.

Then two rich, respectable, careful men, to establish that respectability is neither a barrier nor a help. Then the women, to establish that the people the world has decided to trust with nothing are exactly who this news was handed to first.

And then the sixth book, which is the hardest one: not saved one by one but saved together. A Roman soldier and the rebel he once put in irons, sitting at the same table, eating the same bread, discovering they have been made brothers. A private peace with God can be claimed by anyone and checked by nobody. A Roman and a Zealot breaking one loaf is a peace you can see. The reconciliation you can see is the proof of the one you can’t.

Most novels working with Scripture leave the seam invisible, and a reader is left to guess which bits were in the Bible and which arrived with the novelist. That guessing does two kinds of harm. It lets a reader walk away believing something about the Bible that the Bible does not say. And it gives a sceptical reader every reason to distrust the whole enterprise.

So this series marks the seam, everywhere, and lets you turn the marks on wherever you are reading on this site.

● In Scripture · ◐ Named by tradition · ○ Original to the series

The rule the books never break: imagination fills the silences; it never contradicts the text. Where Scripture speaks, the story follows it. Where Scripture is quiet, the story listens for what might have been true — and says plainly that it is listening.

The honest ledger of every invention in the series is published in full. Read it →

He is the still centre of all six books and the protagonist of none. The series watches him always from the outside — through a thief’s fading sight, a soldier’s spear, a freed man’s disbelief, a councillor’s careful distance, a healed woman’s tears. He speaks little and is described less, because the point of view never sits with him.

Everything the Gospels record of the Passion is kept exactly as it stands. The invention is only ever in the watchers at the edges. Never in him.

The author prefers the books to do the talking, and doesn’t do much publicity. Reader letters are read and answered. Write to us →