All the Saints and Angels (and some Gods and Goddesses too) Want You to Buy Books for Christmas

Three years ago Mondadori Italy published a book on Saints. The book is organized according to the calendar year, with each day represented by the appropriate saint who is associated with that day.  I fell in love with it. It is small, chunky and cute - and I happen to love books where you can check out what important thing is associated with your birthday (in my case, it is the day associated with Saint Florian, protector of firefighters, whose name means "A follower of Flora".  How nice!)  In my role as an agent for rights sales for Mondadori, I approached Editor-in-Chief Eric Himmel at Harry N. Abrams about the possibility of producing the book for the English market.  Eric loved the book too.  He had a hunch that it would do well and committed to a big first printing (at least for an art book!) And thus the making of a great "sleeper" hit series of books was born.

Saints has reprinted continuously since its first publication by Abrams.  How gratifying it was to arrive in Frankfurt the following year and suddenly everyone was looking for a book on Saints! Ha! Too late!



And we were already on to the next subject matter: Angels, and now Myths. Like their predecessor, Angels and Myths are compact and appealing, and chock full of beautiful art, interesting information, and wonderful stories (and priced at $19.95 - even with the economy in shambles you can afford this!). Who knew there were so many kinds of angels?: seraphim, cherubs, archangels, guardian angels, rebel angels, fallen angels; angels as messengers, punishers, soldiers, intercessors and saviours. And when it comes to mythological creatures, forget it: their are gods, goddesses, earth dieties, infernal dieties, heroes, you name it.

Now that it has come to update the newest edition of Saints, I have asked my Italian colleagues if there might be any American saints they'd like to add to the book. Preposterous thought! Okay, I was kind of joking, and as I expected my friends just looked at me like I was insane - either because 1) Who ever heard of an American saint? or 2) Well, maybe there are one or two, but they are definitely not cool enough to hang out with the European saints in the same book!