From time to time, angels--and widespread fascination with them--have given books a winged lift. Publishers hope this will be such a time again, and they’re lining up heavyweight authors to give an earthly push.
New and re-released books anticipate that the fascination with angels or spiritual beings wasn’t just a fad of the ‘90s. James Redfield, author of the 1994 bestseller The Celestine Prophecy, is leading the way. The Twelfth Insight (Grand Central, Feb.) is his first new novel in 12 years.
The Twelfth Insight leads readers up Mount Sinai as characters seek to bring deep wisdom to a resistant, ideologically stubborn world. Transforming human bodies into spiritual forms is a step along the way, and one that’s no longer reserved for the afterlife. While his book is fiction, Redfield told RBL it sheds light on a new, non-sectarian spirituality that’s emerging in our time.
“[My] first books were really talking about more of an intellectual discovery,” Redfield said. “I’ve waited around this long [12 years] to convince myself that we’ve taken these other insights and we’re now integrating them into daily life.”
Redfield aims to build on past success. The Twelfth Insight is the fourth in a series that began with The Celestine Prophecy, a New York Times bestseller for three years. The initial print run for The Twelfth Insight will be 92,000, adding to the 12 million Redfield books already in print. Marketing efforts include print ads, as well book tours in both the U.S. and Europe.
The season’s angel revisitation includes a new edition of Sophy Burnham’s A Book of Angels (Penguin/Tarcher, Mar.). First published by Ballantine in 1990, A Book of Angels has sold more than 1.1 million copies and is sometimes credited with touching off the 1990s angel craze. The book blends hopeful anecdotes with discussion of how angels have been understood in Christianity, Islam, and other ancient traditions.
“In the wake of current books on people who glimpse heaven and describe their experiences of angels, [readers] of those books are going to be very interested in understanding more about angels, where they come from, and where they’re found in sacred scriptures,” said Tarcher publisher and v-p Joel Fotinos. “I think there’s a whole new wave of readers who really want this information.”(In February, Tarcher also published Burnham’s newest book: The Art of Intuition: Cultivating Your Inner Wisdom).
Angels aren’t just for New Agers. That’s one rationale for publishing Andrew DeStefano’s The Invisible World: Understanding Angels, Demons and the Spiritual Realities that Surround Us (Doubleday Religion, Mar.). DeStefano frames spiritual beings as real phenomena, not figments of imagination. He considers them through the lenses of grace, redemption, and other Christian doctrines.
“Angels are not a small, unimportant part of Christianity,” writes DeStefano. “They are an essential part. And not only of Christianity, but of all the major religions of the world.”
