Book: Scandalous Risks, Susan Howatch
"God is very much greater than a little book like Honest to God, Miss Flaxton, and Honest to God in fact reflects not God at all but twentieth-century man, bewildered and alienated, freed from witchcraft but enslaved by the dogmas of science, liberated by the Enlightenment but imprisoned by rationality, blessed with the power of improving his material world, but knowning too that one push of a button could bring it all to an end."

--Father Jon Darrow in Susan Howatch's Scandalous Risks

I know it's not for everyone (hence the reason Doug turns down his nose to it), but I have to say that Susan Howatch is a quintessential yucky weather book. Scandalous Risks is the 4th of 6 novels in her Church of England Series. It is the best of both worlds--eventful and steamy enough to be somewhat of a guilty pleasure read, but woven throughout with intelligent commentary on the nature of the divine and the human personality, as well as commentary on the history of the Church of England and its scandals-a-plenty. It stands as a novel on its own, but for someone who has gone through the entire series thus far, it expands the characters of previous novels in fascinating ways.