Featured Resource: In Radical Forgiveness, Antoinette Bosco, who forgave the man who killed her son and daughter-in-law in their Montana home and has worked tirelessly against the death penalty, provides an in-depth examination of the Christian practice of forgiveness.

• Phil Cousineau shares a top-drawer collection of 15 essays on understanding and practicing atonement as an act that makes amends and repairs harm.

• Joan Chittister profoundly and prophetically assesses forgiveness and other essentials of the Christian path.

• William Martin offers a fascinating and fruitful exploration of forgiveness through Taoist and Zen stories, poems, questions, and exercises.

• Philip H. Friedman provides an impressive and multidimensional collection of exercises and practices to nurture forgiveness in us.

• Joseph Sica probes the spiritual practice of forgiveness in creative, constructive, and illuminating ways.

• Paula Huston examines different aspects of forgiveness in relationship to Jesus' teachings on love.

• Kent Nerburn writes about real people facing steep challenges, illustrating how walking the hard road of forgiveness can be a habit of the heart.

• D. Patrick Miller defines forgiveness as a specific act, an attitude, an art, and an ongoing process.

• Harold S. Kushner reveals that God's forgiveness enables us to accept our flaws and the flaws of others.

• Joseph Sharp makes the point that like spiritual maturity, forgiveness cannot be rushed.

• Janis Abrahms Spring frames her assessment of forgiveness in terms of interpersonal relationships and psychological insights.

• Fred Luskin, cofounder and director of the Stanford University Forgiveness Project, offers techniques for implementing this important spiritual practice.

• Gerald G. Jampolsky discusses how this practice heals on physical and mental levels.

• Lewis B. Smedes notes that "forgiveness is love's revolution against life's unfairness" in this watershed work on the difficult subject.

• Flora Slosson Wuellner uses the Beatitudes as a way of framing the multidimensional nature of forgiveness.

• L. William Countryman sheds light on the relationship between forgiveness and grace.

• Lyn Klug presents Christian prayers and quotations on this practice.

• His Holiness the Dalai Lama forgives his enemies and sees their welfare and happiness linked to his own.

• Madeleine Ko-I Bastis, a Buddhist hospital chaplain, demonstrates the transformative powers of this practice.

• Jack Kornfield offers wise insights into forgiveness in this devotional Buddhist work.

• South Africa's Desmond Tutu ponders the role of forgiveness in the process of restorative justice.

• Antoinette Bosco sets her thoughts about forgiveness in the context of speaking out against capital punishment.

• Melinda Ribner examines the role of forgiveness in her synthesis of Jewish and New Age thought.

• Search for all books about forgiveness.

Life can turn dark in the twinkling of an eye. In a spiritual emergency, one way to rebuild our character is the practice of forgiveness. These are themes of Anne Tyler's novel Saint Maybe.

In 1965 Baltimore, Ian Bedloe belongs to an "ideal, apple-pie household." He and his parents are surprised, then, when his older brother Danny decides to marry Lucy, a divorcee with two small children. One evening Ian, feeling pressed into too much babysitting, expresses in harsh and judgmental terms his doubts about Lucy's loyalty to Danny. The consequences are catastrophic and, over the years, Ian must go through the different seasons of forgiveness as he struggles to make peace with the past.

• Rosemary Wells offers a sprightly story affirming cross-cultural values and forgiveness.

• Susan Schnur and Anna Schnur-Fishman present a splendid story about a Jewish family's New Year ritual for forgiveness, letting go, and new beginnings.

• Theologian Leonardo Boff explores some heavy duty meanings of the spiritual practice of forgiveness using the prayer of St. Francis as his launch pad.

• Jean Vanier discusses three basic principles underlying forgiveness in the move towards reconciliation.

• Lewis B. Smedes stirs our souls with an enlightening essay on forgiveness.

• Kent Nerburn examines one of the dilemmas faced by those who need to forgive.

• Hugh Prather sees forgiveness as something that should be spontaneous and not necessarily as something arising from good judgment.

The great teachers of old used stories to broaden the scope of their students' practice of forgiveness, including avoiding the need for it in the first place. To see how, check out the stories in these books:

• In Minyan, Rami Shapiro shares a story about the town gossip who learned the hard way about how difficult it is to make amends.

• Joseph Telushkin in The Book of Jewish Values portrays a shoemaker's wisdom on mending.

• In New Age Judaism, Melinda Ribner presents a story about a great rebbe who regularly asked forgiveness of everyone in his house.

• Yushi Nomura in Desert Wisdom writes about Abba Moses, one of the Christian desert fathers, who was very reluctant to judge others.