The Golden Verses by Barbara Miller

"Obey your compassionate instincts, Charles. Buy them!"

So declares the old bookseller as he shuffles into Charles's bookshop. He unloads what appear to be beat-up and worthless Bibles on the hapless Charles, proclaiming that certain people in the small town need the books desperately. He promises that when the passages printed in gold are read, the scriptures come to life.

Among the six people to buy the Bibles are Theo Atwood, an agnostic mortician whose business is suddenly threatened by a new, believing undertaker; Lottie Mariah, a hairdresser with a dubious reputation who yearns for true friendship; Nancy Rutledge, a recent widow with a shameful secret; William Hicken, a greedy banker obsessed with counting and acquisition; Charles himself, whose generosity is deplored by his shrewish wife; and Dory, Charles's young assistant, who learns that the Bibles are accompanied by a dark and threatening adversary.

The Golden Verses, a tale of good versus evil, is as old as time and as familiar as your face in

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