A Bible commentary with a difference, Words That Listen provides readings from world literature to accompany every Gospel passage of the Revised Common Lectionary for Years A, B and C.

For each Sunday Gospel reading, it offers four extracts, with commentary, from fiction, nonfiction, poems, great speeches and sacred texts, to plays, television and film scripts, social commentaries, and theologians past and present.

Authors featured include:

* writers from the classical Christian tradition, from Origen to Rowan Williams

* many literary greats, including Dante, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Emily Bronte, T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf and Oscar Wilde

* recent and contemporary poets: U. A. Fanthorpe, Seamus Heaney, Mary Oliver, Wendell Berry and Malcolm Guite

* modern novelists and writers: P D James, Annie Dillard, Maya Angelou, Stephen King and Marilynne Robinson

* filmmakers and screenwriters: Martin Scorcese, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg

* songwriters and musicians: Leonard Cohen, U2, Led Zeppelin and Lady Gaga

* paintings from leading artists that illuminate biblical events and encounters.

Bound in two paperback volumes in a slipcase, Words That Listen brings together the worlds of art and faith to offer a unique resource for all who preach.