Michael O'Brien Books in Order

In a near future North America where communications and infrastructure suddenly collapse, scattered people are drawn together by shared dreams and mysterious children they call their pied piper youngsters. Their trek toward mountain refuge becomes a story of trust, sacrifice, and community in the midst of chaos.

This historical novel imagines the early life of the prophet Ezekiel, from his simple work as a bricklayer in Jerusalem to exile among the captives by the River Chebar. As he serves his broken people, the seeds are planted for the fierce prophet he will become.

Elderly Oxford historian Owen Whitfield looks forward to a quiet gardening year, only to be drawn into the troubles of a threatened family with enemies in high places. His unexpected journey across Europe tests his ideas about providence, history, and what courage looks like in old age.

Based on a public lecture, this short book traces the history of human creativity from cave paintings to modern media and asks what our images say about us. O'Brien reflects on idols, objects, and icons, and urges a renewed Christian imagination grounded in humility and prayer.

Presented as a candid conversation between Michael O'Brien and fellow artist Clemens Cavallin, this book explores the joys and wounds of a Christian creative vocation. Together they ponder beauty, suffering, and how real art can become an act of love offered back to God.

Waiting gathers five Advent stories in which ordinary people face loss, evil, and uncertainty while learning to hope. Without sentimentality, the tales show how grace works quietly in dark seasons and how even small acts of faith can change the course of a life.

Ethan McQuarry, a solitary lighthouse keeper on a tiny island off Cape Breton, thinks he is content with storms, books, and sea birds for company. Encounters with unexpected visitors slowly awaken his buried loneliness and invite him to see his isolation in a new light.

This collection of essays argues that modern soft totalitarianism works less through violence than through laws, media, and education that undermine the family. O'Brien explores how Christian households can resist cultural pressure, protect children, and become small communities of truth, mercy, and courage.

In this accessible work of theology, O'Brien reflects on the Book of Revelation and related prophecies, warning against both fear and naive optimism. He invites readers to see the end times as a call to deeper conversion, steady hope, and daily spiritual combat.

In modern Manhattan, gentle giant Billy befriends an amnesiac who believes he is the painter Francisco de Goya, mysteriously still alive. Their search for the man's real past becomes a journey through trauma, memory, and the strange ways love restores broken identities.

Now a bishop and fugitive from false charges, Elijah returns to confront the same world leader he once failed to sway. Entering Jerusalem with Brother Enoch as global power gathers there, he must discern how obedience, mercy, and martyrdom fit into his final mission.

Eighty years in the future, Nobel Prize winning physicist Neil de Hoyos boards the vast starship Kosmos, hoping to escape an intrusive, seemingly humane world government. As the years of the voyage unfold, he discovers a hidden regime of surveillance, lies, and an unexpected path to freedom.

When his college age son vanishes without a trace, quiet Canadian bookseller Alex Graham abandons his safe routines and follows a fragile trail across continents. The search draws him into political tensions and profound suffering, becoming a long pilgrimage of fatherhood, forgiveness, and rediscovered faith.

Expanding on his earlier essays, O'Brien examines the Harry Potter novels and similar fantasy through a Christian lens. He contrasts their use of magic and morality with writers like Tolkien and Lewis, and offers parents questions to ask as they guide their children's reading.

Theophilos, an aging Greek physician and adoptive father of Luke, is unsettled when his son's Gospel reaches him from afar. Setting out to find Luke, he meets those who knew Jesus and slowly confronts his skepticism, pride, and hunger for a truth he cannot control.

Josip Lasta, the son of a poor teacher in the Bosnian mountains, is swept into the brutal upheavals of World War II and communist rule. Over decades of exile and loss, he struggles to hold memory, language, and faith together in a shattered world.

In Nazi occupied Warsaw, weary bookseller Pawel Tarnowski shelters Jewish teenager David Schäfer in his shop attic. As winter deepens and the threat of discovery grows, the two wrestle with guilt, identity, and God, forging a spiritual fatherhood that will shape David's future as Father Elijah.

Abandoned as an infant and raised by her devout grandmother in northern Ontario, native artist Rose Wabos grows up poor, gifted, and overlooked. Her journey from remote bush to city galleries explores poverty of spirit, beauty, and the hidden greatness of apparently small lives.

Nathaniel Delaney, editor of a small town paper, watches his country drift quietly from democracy toward totalitarian rule. Hunted by authorities, he records events in a searing journal that exposes both government lies and his own compromises as he fights to protect his children.

Anne Delaney, an English intellectual fleeing her past, settles in rugged British Columbia and marries Irish immigrant Stephen, a man scarred by violence. Their family story unfolds across the twentieth century, tracing exile, marriage, and the slow move from unbelief toward faith.

In a near future North America sliding into soft dictatorship, the Delaney family is shattered when their journalist father is arrested for telling the truth. As children scatter into forests and hiding, they confront propaganda, fear, and the choice between compromise and costly resistance.

A tiny, clumsy angel spends his days polishing stars and longing for a more important task. When he is finally sent to watch over a little boy on earth, he discovers that quiet, faithful guardianship can shine brighter than the grandest display in heaven.

Holocaust survivor David Schäfer has become Carmelite priest Father Elijah, hidden on Mount Carmel until the Pope sends him to confront a world leader who may be the Antichrist. Crossing Europe and the Middle East, he must face old wounds and radical trust.

This nonfiction study looks at how modern children's stories use symbols, especially dragons, and how those images shape a child's moral imagination. O'Brien offers parents practical tools for discernment and recommends classic tales that nurture courage, clarity about good and evil, and wonder.