The Protoevangelium Collection Is Here

It started with a question we couldn't stop asking: what if the books we already loved were trying to tell us something about God?

Not "Catholic books." Not theology textbooks or devotional readers. Books about dinosaurs and astronauts and galactic empires. A spy thriller. A graphic novel about a man who accidentally becomes a god. A story about a guy and a girl in eighteenth-century England who can't figure out how to be honest with each other. Books that millions of people carry in their hearts — books we carried in ours long before we ever walked into a church.

Today, we're releasing the answer to that question. The Protoevangelium Collection is available now.

What It Is

The Protoevangelium Collection is eleven essays on eleven beloved novels, read through the Catholic intellectual tradition. Each essay offers original literary and theological analysis — connecting themes from the novels to Sacred Scripture, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and two thousand years of Catholic thought. Every essay includes discussion questions designed to push past surface-level conversation into the stuff that actually matters.

The books covered are The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum, Foundation by Isaac Asimov, Dune by Frank Herbert, Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, The Martian by Andy Weir, and The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis.

Why "Protoevangelium"

The word means "first Gospel." It refers to Genesis 3:15 — the moment, right at the beginning of the story, when God tells us He's going to fix everything. Before the law, before the prophets, before the Incarnation, there's this: a promise. And the whole arc of salvation history is that promise being kept.

We chose the name because that's what these books are doing, even though most of the authors had no idea. They're reaching toward a Gospel that hasn't arrived yet in their stories. The restlessness, the searching, the sense that something is broken and something else is calling — that's the Protoevangelium at work. The hole in every story is exactly the shape of the One who fills all things.

How It's Arranged

This isn't a random collection. The essays are arranged as a journey — the kind of journey a soul takes on its way to faith.

We begin with Douglas Adams asking the most fundamental question: is there any meaning at all? From there we move through moral reasoning with Orson Scott Card, power and false gods with Alan Moore, the theology of marriage with Jane Austen, the destruction of conscience with Aldous Huxley, identity and conversion with Robert Ludlum, the preservation of divine revelation with Isaac Asimov, the danger of manufactured messiahs with Frank Herbert, the natural law with Michael Crichton, the gifts of intellect and will with Andy Weir, and finally the threshold of eternity itself with C.S. Lewis.

Each essay builds on what came before. By the end, you arrive where we arrived: at the person of Jesus Christ.

Who It's For

If you're a believer looking for a deeper language to talk about your faith and the culture around you — we wrote this for you.

If you're skeptical or curious about what the Catholic tradition actually sees when it looks at the world — we wrote this for you.

If you just love books and want to think harder about the ones you've already read — we wrote this for you.

The Protoevangelium Collection works for individual reading, couples, book clubs, parish discussion groups, and homeschool families. The discussion questions are designed for conversation, not busywork.

Where to Get It

The Protoevangelium Collection is available in three formats:

• Digital PDF — $14.99 — Buy directly from us and own it forever. Full color illustrations. [Buy on our store]
• Paperback — $18.99 — A beautiful 6×9 trade paperback. [Buy on Amazon]
• Kindle — $9.99 — Read it on any device. [Buy on Amazon]

What Comes Next

This is Volume I. The Great Catholic Book Club publishes a new collection every year. Our 2026 reading year, War is Heck, is currently underway — eleven books exploring conflict, conscience, and the moral weight of war. That collection will arrive in 2027.

We're also developing thematic curriculum packs for Catholic homeschool families, drawing from the essays in this and future collections. More on that soon.

In the meantime — read the book. Argue about it with your spouse. Bring it to your book club. Tell us what you think. This is the beginning of a conversation, not the end of one.

Every book is Catholic, because every honest search for truth is a search for the One who is Truth.

Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam.

— Tyler and Sadie