Bøger af Joan Albarella

This one-act play is suitable for audiences from Middle School to Adults. Framed around the request for a high-school research paper, three students introduce the Fourteen Holy Helpers. Each Saint then gives a brief personal history. The Saints are: Denis, Barbara, Catherine, Christopher, Erasmus, Giles, Pantaleon, Cyriacus, Vitus, Achatius, Eustace, George, Blasé, and Margaret.The story of each Saint attempts to historically and symbolically teach that all the obstacles we encounter like, illness, family discord, and injustice, can be overcome with faith and trust in God.

ALWAYS IN MY HEART The Life of Saint Marianne Cope is a one-woman play that follows the life of Barbara Koob who joined the Sisters of St. Francis when she was twenty-four-years-old and became Mother Marianne Cope, canonized October 21, 2012. She served as a teacher, nurse, administrator, and Provincial Superior in Central New York State, helping to open two of the first hospitals there. She then followed the mission call of God and spent the rest of her life ministering to the patients with Hansen's disease (leprosy) in Hawaii. She brought concern and spirituality to those condemned to darkness. Today, she continues to remain an example of faith, courage, and spiritual connectedness.

This humorous mystery deals with female friendship and truth. A plastic surgeon loses a patient and his license. His wife suddenly suffers from an inexplicable malady. Her eclectic group of college girlfriends gather for a reunion/ birthday celebration. Secrets are shared, someone dies, and the lies go on forever.

This one-woman Reader's Theater style play tells the story of Sister Judith Fenyvesi, a Sister of Social Service who overcame the horror of watching her family taken by the Nazis, and the terrible results of the the Holocaust. She then joined the Catholic Resistance movement, was arrested, and served ten years in a communist prison. When she finally reached America, she started a Social Work Program at Daemon College and helped her community lead the large number of sisters living underground in Eastern Europe after the fall of communism. None of her challenges, which included grave physical issues, stopped her from working for social justice and searching for the truth.

Nikki Barnes, Episcopal priest, Vietnam vet, and College Chaplain joins her old buddy Police Sergeant Max Mullen and his new partner Detective Ana Ramos as they track down a ruthless serial killer terrorizing the St. David University community.Old friends like Barrett Fairburn return and new characters enter like the sexy double-amputee Taylor Fleming.Nikki becomes a deadly challenge for the killer who sends her the threatening message, "I can hurt you by hurting someone close to you."Publisher's Weekly said, "The megabutch Nikki, who served a tour in "Nam, is not only irresistible to other women, she's invincible, escaping several attacks to kick butt and save the day."

Murder...rape...incest...danger and more danger appear and reappear as attacks spring out of nowhere, invisible as a fine mist or trusted like a religious garb. EVIL is the last Nikki Barnes Mystery. It is a book that leads us down a path of morality and malice. Nikki is forced to question the very core of her beliefs and retrace the passages of her personal and professional choices. Her decision to be one of the first female ordained priests is disintegrating along with her most precious relationship. Both Ginni and Nikki are touched by the physical and psychological pain of malevolence.As the crack in their relationship grows into a chasm, Dr. Anna Muscato and her dead mother appear. They join the sisterhood of sensuality and unreality, and all play their part to become or to conquer... EVIL.

Again For The First Time is a diverse collection of poems expressing the unexpected and expected; the humorous and the bittersweet; anger, frustration, but mostly, love. What more could anyone want?

This one-act, one-woman play presents the life story of Sr. Karen Klimczak, SSJ. She was Buffalo, New York's "Apostle of Peace," and spent her life working for peace through non-violence. She is best known for starting a half-way house for males recently released from prison. She was murdered by one of the men living at the house. She also created dove-shaped lawn signs that say, "Peaceprints," because she felt we should not just leave fingerprints but Peaceprints, little acts of kindness.