Category: Books

Band of Sisters by Lauren Willig

- Ann Leave a comment

In the fall of 1917, eighteen Smith College graduates leave for war-torn France. They’ve volunteered to aid the people of a group of small rural villages that have been devastated by World War I in Band of Sisters by Laruen Willig.

Swept along by a wave of patriotism and good intentions, the young women are ridiculously unprepared for what they will face in France. One of them even plans to shop for her wedding trousseau in Paris, not realizing the toll the war has taken on the city. Although they are all graduates of Smith College and highly educated, most come from privileged families and have few practical skills. It’s a disaster waiting to happen.

Once the shock of the reality of the situation wears off, the women rally and set out to do their best. They must cope with shortages of food and medical supplies, unreliable transportation (from trains that don’t run on time to a stubborn mule), a complete lack of adequate housing and mud everywhere. They learn to build trucks (their promised trucks arrive unassembled in boxes), handle livestock, scramble and bargain for food and supplies and treat the sick and dying, all against the backdrop of the not-too-distant front lines. Despite differences, they learn their strengths and meld into a team.

Based on true events and people, I quite enjoyed this book. The grit and determination of the women is inspiring as is their ability to adapt and their absolute resolve to help the local people. For much of the book the war felt very distant though; the constant noise of bombing from the not-too-distant front is only occasionally mentioned, the women seemingly more concerned with gossip. It’s not until near the end of the book, when the Germans launch their spring offensive in the Battle of the Somme, that our heroes come face-to-face with the war when they and the people they’ve been helping are forced into a terrifying, chaotic, hasty retreat.

Overall, a satisfying read about a nearly forgotten footnote to history.

May’s Celebrity Book Club Picks

- Stephanie Leave a comment

It’s the beginning of the month which means that Jenna Bush Hager and Reese Witherspoon have picked new books for their book clubs! Reminder that if you join our Best Sellers Club, these titles will automatically be put on hold for you.

Jenna Bush Hager has selected Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead for May.

Curious what Great Circle is about? Check out the following description provided by the publisher.

Spanning Prohibition-era Montana, the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, New Zealand, wartime London, and modern-day Los Angeles, Great Circle tells the unforgettable story of a daredevil female aviator determined to chart her own course in life, at any cost.

After being rescued as infants from a sinking ocean liner in 1914, Marian and Jamie Graves are raised by their dissolute uncle in Missoula, Montana. There–after encountering a pair of barnstorming pilots passing through town in beat-up biplanes–Marian commences her lifelong love affair with flight. At fourteen she drops out of school and finds an unexpected and dangerous patron in a wealthy bootlegger who provides a plane and subsidizes her lessons, an arrangement that will haunt her for the rest of her life, even as it allows her to fulfill her destiny: circumnavigating the globe by flying over the North and South Poles.

A century later, Hadley Baxter is cast to play Marian in a film that centers on Marian’s disappearance in Antarctica. Vibrant, canny, disgusted with the claustrophobia of Hollywood, Hadley is eager to redefine herself after a romantic film franchise has imprisoned her in the grip of cult celebrity. Her immersion into the character of Marian unfolds, thrillingly, alongside Marian’s own story, as the two women’s fates–and their hunger for self-determination in vastly different geographies and times–collide. Epic and emotional, meticulously researched and gloriously told, Great Circle is a monumental work of art, and a tremendous leap forward for the prodigiously gifted Maggie Shipstead.

This book is also available in the following format:

Want to make sure that Jenna’s picks are automatically put on hold for you? Be sure to join our Best Sellers Club.

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Reese Witherspoon has selected The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave.

Curious what The Last Thing He Told Me is about? Check out the following description provided by the publisher.

We all have stories we never tell.

Before Owen Michaels disappears, he manages to smuggle a note to his beloved wife of one year: Protect her.

Despite her confusion and fear, Hannah Hall knows exactly to whom the note refers: Owen’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Bailey. Bailey, who lost her mother tragically as a child. Bailey, who wants absolutely nothing to do with her new stepmother.

As Hannah’s increasingly desperate calls to Owen go unanswered; as the FBI arrests Owen’s boss; as a US Marshal and FBI agents arrive at her Sausalito home unannounced, Hannah quickly realizes her husband isn’t who he said he was. And that Bailey just may hold the key to figuring out Owen’s true identity—and why he really disappeared.

Hannah and Bailey set out to discover the truth, together. But as they start putting together the pieces of Owen’s past, they soon realize they are also building a new future. One neither Hannah nor Bailey could have anticipated.

This book is also available in the following format:

Want to make sure Reese’s picks are automatically put on hold for you? Be sure to join our Best Sellers Club.

The Bad Muslim Discount by Syed Masood

- Stephanie Leave a comment

I am consistently working on broadening my reading. As an avid book reader, I have an ever-growing list of titles outside my norm that I have dedicated 2021 to tackle. My latest read by Syed M. Masood captivated my interest, traveled the world, and spanned decades. Masood grew up in Karachi, Pakistan and currently lives in Sacramento, California. He is a world traveler and his life experiences are reflected in his book, The Bad Muslim Discount. 

The Bad Muslim Discount by Syed M. Masood follows two families across decades. From Pakistan and Iraq in the 1990s all the way to San Francisco in 2016, this novel highlights the lives of two Muslim families and their journey to the United States.

1995: Anvar Faris is growing up in Karachi, Pakistan. As the youngest son, Anvar is constantly measured against his older brother. As a result, Anvar is rebellious, restless, and constantly being scolded by his mother for his words. Closest to his grandmother, Anvar spends time with her learning how to play chess and trying to beat her. At this same time, fundamentalists in the government increasingly become louder and more forceful. Religious zealots knock on doors and the streets are more dangerous. With Islam on the rise more and more, Anvar’s family is getting worried. His father decides to move the family to California to start over. Not everyone in the family is happy with the move, but it happens nonetheless. Anvar may not have fit in 100% in Karachi, but he soon finds out that he doesn’t fit in in California. So begins Anvar’s journey to carve out a place for himself where he can be happy.

While Anvar is struggling to find himself, Safwa has problems of her own. Thousands of miles away in Baghdad, Safwa is also struggling. Her family has been rocked by tragedy. Her grief-stricken father wants Safwa to follow his conservative values, something of which she is not a fan. With nothing left to hold them at home, the two begin a dangerous trip to America that could not be more different than Anvar’s.

While Anvar and Safwa’s paths to America differ, at the core they do share similarities. Once both have made it to California, their lives begin to bring them closer together. The closer their worlds become, the more their fates and the fates of those around them intertwine. The decisions both Anvar and Safwa make set off a series of events that will destroy their community and alter their lives forever.

Book Club @ Night – ‘Before We Were Yours’ on May 19

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Looking for a new book club to join? Book Club @ Night is back and we’re reading adult fiction! On Wednesday, May 19th at 6:30p, we will be discussing Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate. Books are available at our Eastern Avenue curbside location for patrons to borrow for this book club. Registration is not required. This program is meeting virtually using GoTo Meeting. Information about how to join is listed below.

Curios what Before We Were Yours is about? Check out the following description provided by the publisher:

Memphis, 1939. Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings live a magical life aboard their family’s Mississippi River shantyboat. But when their father must rush their mother to the hospital one stormy night, Rill is left in charge—until strangers arrive in force. Wrenched from all that is familiar and thrown into a Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage, the Foss children are assured that they will soon be returned to their parents—but they quickly realize the dark truth. At the mercy of the facility’s cruel director, Rill fights to keep her sisters and brother together in a world of danger and uncertainty.

Aiken, South Carolina, present day. Born into wealth and privilege, Avery Stafford seems to have it all: a successful career as a federal prosecutor, a handsome fiancé, and a lavish wedding on the horizon. But when Avery returns home to help her father weather a health crisis, a chance encounter leaves her with uncomfortable questions and compels her to take a journey through her family’s long-hidden history, on a path that will ultimately lead either to devastation or to redemption.

Based on one of America’s most notorious real-life scandals—in which Georgia Tann, director of a Memphis-based adoption organization, kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families all over the country—Lisa Wingate’s riveting, wrenching, and ultimately uplifting tale reminds us how, even though the paths we take can lead to many places, the heart never forgets where we belong.

This book is also available in the following formats:

Book Club @ Night – ‘Before We Were Yours’ by Lisa Wingate
Wed, May 19, 2021 6:30 PM – 7:30 PM (CDT)

Please join my meeting from your computer, tablet or smartphone.
https://global.gotomeeting.com/join/669336645

You can also dial in using your phone.
United States: +1 (224) 501-3412

Access Code: 669-336-645

New to GoToMeeting? Get the app now and be ready when your first meeting starts:
https://global.gotomeeting.com/install/669336645

Invisible In-betweens: Gender Identity 201

- Callen Leave a comment

Gender identity is a hot topic in politics and culture lately, and for good reason. More people than ever before are feeling comfortable expressing the true range of their gender identity, but that means a lot of new and unfamiliar concepts are coming into the mainstream. If you’re overwhelmed, worried, or confused about what it all means, that’s okay – we can help with that! Research has shown that reading books, especially fiction, about people different from you can help build your empathy and understanding for them. I’m a firm believer that if we could only understand each other better and have compassion for each other, the world would be a kinder place – so if you liked my previous recommendations (or if you missed them entirely) try one of these titles to build a better understanding of a complicated issue. My focus this time around is on the muddled, fluid, unclear in-between places where gender isn’t clear-cut.

  

For a comprehensive look at gender diversity, try They/Them/Their by Eris Young – available through interlibrary loan, it focuses mostly on gender diversity in the United Kingdom, but with applicable concepts for US audiences. What I especially like about this book is its careful discussion of various terms and their meanings, and its heavy use of first-person accounts describing real-life experiences. If you’re completely new to the world of gender diversity, this is a great place to start.

        

If you’d like a book that helps you get used to hearing gender-neutral pronouns, and focuses on adventures and everyday activities of gender-diverse people, try one of these great titles. The Love Study is a light-hearted romance between a man with a fear of commitment and a genderqueer YouTuber. Finna by Nino Cipri is a funny sci-fi take on working retail, featuring Ava, an anxious girl, and her recent ex, genderqueer Jules. Mask of Shadows is the dark and exciting fantasy adventure of Sal, a genderfluid thief who takes the opportunity to audition to be an assassin for the queen, only to find themself falling in love with scribe Elise. Spin With Me is a sweet story of the mutual crush that blossoms between Essie, the reluctant new girl in town, and Ollie, a non-binary classmate passionate about LGBTQ advocacy.

 

For a meaningful memoir, try Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe and Identity by Corey Maison. I especially recommend Gender Queer if you’re not familiar with alternative pronouns: the author uses e/em/eir instead of he/him/his, she/her/hers, or they/them/theirs. These books are especially good for seeing life from a gender-diverse person’s perspective, because they detail the processes and emotions surrounding the authors’ quests to live authentically as themselves.

For a comics treatment, try Be Gay, Do Comics, edited by Matt Bors, and A Quick and Easy Guide to They/Them Pronouns by Archie Bongiovanni and Tristan Jimerson. Be Gay, Do Comics is a massive anthology of comics describing the wide world of LGBTQ+ experience, including the spectrum of gender diversity and the struggle of pronouns. A Quick and Easy Guide is, well, exactly what it sounds like. If you’re confused by the singular they/them pronouns or aren’t really familiar with how it works, this is a good book to start with, not least because it includes perspectives from both inside and outside the non-binary gender experience. See also A Quick and Easy Guide to Queer and Trans Identities by Mady G and J.R. Zuckerberg.

 

Finally, make it manga (Japanese graphic novels) with My Androgynous Boyfriend by Tamekou, The Bride Was A Boy by Chii, and Love Me for What I Am by Kata Konayama. These beautifully and/or adorably illustrated graphic novels tell the story of gender-diverse people as they fit into (or stand out of) everyday society. In My Androgynous Boyfriend, an average girl dates a boy skilled in the arts of makeup, nails, hair, and fashion – and they navigate the response of society to his unconventional self-expression. In The Bride Was A Boy, a transgender bride shares her journey through transition into love and matrimony, with cute humor along the way. Finally, Love Me for What I Am focuses on a non-binary teen finding community and acceptance working at an unusual café.

Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club Picks

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Oprah Winfrey has selected the Gilead quartet of novels by Marilynne Robinson as her current book club selections: Gilead, Home, Lila, and Jack. Join our Best Sellers Club and have Oprah’s book club selections automatically put on hold for you. The following descriptions are provided by the publisher.

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Gilead – first published in 2004

Nearly 25 years after Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson returns with an intimate tale of three generations, from the Civil War to the 20th century: a story about fathers and sons and the spiritual battles that still rage at America’s heart. In the words of Kirkus, it is a novel “as big as a nation, as quiet as thought, and moving as prayer. Matchless and towering.” GILEAD tells the story of America and will break your heart.

This book is also available in the following formats:

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Home – published in 2008

Home parallels the story told in Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Gilead. It is a moving and healing book about families, family secrets, and the passing of the generations, about love and death and faith.

Hundreds of thousands were enthralled by the luminous voice of John Ames in Gilead Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel. Home is an entirely independent, deeply affecting novel that takes place concurrently in the same locale, this time in the household of Reverend Robert Boughton, Ames’s closest friend.

Glory Boughton, aged thirty-eight, has returned to Gilead to care for her dying father. Soon her brother, Jack—the prodigal son of the family, gone for twenty years—comes home too, looking for refuge and trying to make peace with a past littered with tormenting trouble and pain.

Jack is one of the great characters in recent literature. A bad boy from childhood, an alcoholic who cannot hold a job, he is perpetually at odds with his surroundings and with his traditionalist father, though he remains Boughton’s most beloved child. Brilliant, lovable, and wayward, Jack forges an intense bond with Glory and engages painfully with Ames, his godfather and namesake.

Home is a moving and healing book about families, family secrets, and the passing of the generations, about love and death and faith. It is Robinson’s greatest work, an unforgettable embodiment of the deepest and most universal emotions.

This book is also available in the following formats:

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Lila – published in 2014

Marilynne Robinson, one of the greatest novelists of our time, returns to the town of Gilead in an unforgettable story of a girlhood lived on the fringes of society in fear, awe, and wonder.

Lila, homeless and alone after years of roaming the countryside, steps inside a small-town Iowa church – the only available shelter from the rain – and ignites a romance and a debate that will reshape her life. She becomes the wife of a minister, John Ames, and begins a new existence while trying to make sense of the life that preceded her newfound security.

Neglected as a toddler, Lila was rescued by Doll, a canny young drifter, and brought up by her in a hardscrabble childhood. Together they crafted a life on the run, living hand to mouth with nothing but their sisterly bond and a ragged blade to protect them. Despite bouts of petty violence and moments of desperation, their shared life was laced with moments of joy and love. When Lila arrives in Gilead, she struggles to reconcile the life of her makeshift family and their days of hardship with the gentle Christian worldview of her husband which paradoxically judges those she loves.

Revisiting the beloved characters and setting of Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Gilead and Home, a National Book Award finalist, Lila is a moving expression of the mysteries of existence that is destined to become an American classic.

This book is also available in the following formats:

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Jack – published in 2020

Marilynne Robinson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Humanities Medal, returns to the world of Gilead with Jack, the latest in one of the great works of contemporary American fiction.

Jack  tells the story of John Ames Boughton, the beloved, erratic, and grieved-over prodigal son of a Presbyterian minister in Gilead, Iowa. In segregated St. Louis sometime after World War II, Jack falls in love with Della Miles, an African American high school teacher who is also the daughter of a preacher―discerning, generous, and independent. Their fraught, beautiful romance is one of Robinson’s greatest achievements.

The Gilead novels are about the dilemmas and promise of American history―about the ongoing legacy of the Civil War and the enduring impact of both racial inequality and deep-rooted religious belief. They touch the deepest chords in our national character and resonate with our deepest feelings.

This book is also available in the following formats:

Want to make sure that all of Oprah’s future book club selections are put on hold for you? Join our Best Sellers Club and we’ll automatically put them on hold as soon as they are announced.

Online Reading Challenge – May

- Ann Leave a comment

Hello Challenge Readers!

Welcome to the May Challenge. This month’s author is: Toni Morrison!

A Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winning author, Morrison wrote with depth and heart that was both brutally honest and astonishingly beautiful. Her books examine the African American experience, both it’s joys and it’s heartbreak and the long lasting effects of slavery and racism. If you haven’t read any of Morrison’s novels, this is a perfect time to read one of these lyrical novels which include Song of Solomon, The Bluest Eye and Beloved as well as several others.

If you would like to read books that are similar to Toni Morrison, check the list below. I’ve listed books that focus on the African-American experience and on racism in American rather than on books that may be similar to Morrison’s unique writing style. Choose something that interests you and maybe push the boundaries of your usual reading preferences.

Mama Day by Gloria Naylor

If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson

The Known World by Edward Jones

The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates

I’m planning on reading Homegoing by Gyasi about two half-sisters born in Africa with two very different destinies, one who is enslaved and sent to America and the other who marries a white man and lives in relative luxury.  I’m looking forward to see how their stories unfold.

What about you – what will you be reading in May?

Online Reading Challenge – April Wrap-Up

- Ann 6 Comments

Hello Challengers!

How did your reading go this month? I hope you found something interesting for our Jojo Moyes read-alike month. I hadn’t read anything by Moyes, so I choose one of her more popular titles, The Giver of Stars.

Taking place in the Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky, The Giver of Stars dramatizes the work of the WPA Packhorse Librarians of Kentucky which ran from 1935 to 1943. Hobbled by poverty, isolation and lack of resources, the people of this area had little access to reading material. The Packhorse Librarians brought books, newspapers and magazines to far flung mountain homes, facing difficult terrain, bad weather and suspicious landowners. Their hard work provides a fascinating backdrop to the stories and adventures of the people of this beautiful but unforgiving land.

The small town of Baileyville. Kentucky has been hit hard by the Great Depression. Coal mining has provided some jobs, but at great cost both to the miners and their families and to the land. Alice Van Cleve, recently arrived from England and newly married to the son of the mine owner, she finds it nearly impossible to fit in. When the call goes out for ladies to help run the newly established Packhorse library, she is quick to volunteer despite the objections of her conservative husband and father-in-law. Away from her overbearing family and loveless marriage,  Alice has more freedom and independence than she has ever known and grows to love the land and the people she serves.

Alice and the other library workers face many obstacles including a catastrophic flood, townspeople who try to shut down the library as “unChristian”, lack of funds and materials, wild animals and treacherous terrain. There’s some romance, some heartbreak and a murder mystery. Through it all, Alice and her library friends form an unbreakable bond, coming together to support and celebrate. I especially enjoyed reading about and was impressed by the hard work these women did and their dedication to their patrons and literacy.

Earlier in the month I mentioned that I had read The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Richardson a couple years ago. It is also about the Packhorse Librarians of Kentucky and was published just a few months before The Giver of Stars. At the time, there was some controversy that Moyes’ book had plagiarized  the earlier book. I didn’t feel that though – while both books center on the Packhorse Librarian program during the Great Depression, the characters and what happens to them are very different. Both are worth reading!

Now it’s your turn – what did you read in April?

New Religion Titles at Eastern

- Anna Leave a comment

Looking for a new religious title to read? Here are some books that hit the shelves at our Eastern Branch in January, February, and March. If any of these titles interest you, you can use the links below to place a hold in our catalog, or you can always give us a call to put one on hold for you. The following descriptions were provided by the publisher.

Centered: Trading Your Plans for a Life that Matters by Jason Brown 

This riveting story of a top-earning NFL center and his family who walked away from it all to follow God’s call to alleviate hunger as farmers–a life they knew absolutely nothing about–illustrates the sacrifice and ultimate reward of obedience to our heavenly Father even when it doesn’t make earthly sense.

NFL lineman Jason Brown had everything he could ever want. He was the highest-paid center in the game, lived a life of luxury, and was cheered on by millions of people every week. Then, in 2012, Jason heard a call from God that changed everything. Jason turned his back on an incredibly successful career in football to pursue a new dream: ending hunger. But through third-party mismanagement and bad luck, Jason lost most of his savings from the NFL–the same money he’d planned to use to start his new career. He desperately needed the miracle that soon came.

Today, Jason and his family run First Fruits Farms in Louisburg, North Carolina, a state where one in four children don’t know where their next meal will come from. Since 2014, the Browns have donated more than 1.6 million servings of fresh produce to their community. Their motto: Never stop giving. Never stop loving. Never stop growing.

With powerful and deeply personal insight, Centered is an inspiration to embrace the joy of following where God leads–no matter how crazy it sounds.

Crazy Happy: Nine Surprising Ways to Live the Truly Beautiful Life by Daniel Fusco

Is it crazy to want a happy life? The host of Jesus Is Real Radio and Hillsong Channel’s Real with Daniel Fusco unlocks the happiness we long for in the most famous teachings of Jesus and the apostle Paul.

Dissatisfied with your life? Yeah, most of us have been there. There’s no shame in wanting to be happy, but real satisfaction often eludes us. At best, what fleeting happiness we find tends to dribble away in never-ending debts, stressful deadlines, and mindless scrolling. At worst, it’s chased away by anxiety, depression, or fallout from our selfishness.

Here’s the truth: whether we hunt for happiness in parties, bars, the workplace hustle, or even in church pews, we’ll wind up shortchanged. Why? Because we don’t see our lives as beautiful.

But God wants something better for you—happiness so real this world might think it’s too good to be true.

In Crazy Happy, Daniel Fusco unpacks fresh connections in two of the Bible’s most familiar passages—secrets of happiness that can really, truly, honest-to-goodness change things. If you stick around for the ride, you’ll find the kind of God-given beauty that can change your life for good—even in our sometimes-crazy world.

Faith After Doubt: Why Your Beliefs Stopped Working and What to Do About It  by Brian D. McLaren

From the author of A New Kind of Christianity comes a bold proposal: only doubt can save the world and your faith.

Sixty-five million adults in the U.S. have dropped out of active church attendance and about 2.7 million more are leaving every year. Faith After Doubt is for the millions of people around the world who feel that their faith is falling apart.

Using his own story and the stories of a diverse group of struggling believers, Brian D. McLaren, a former pastor and now an author, speaker, and activist shows how old assumptions are being challenged in nearly every area of human life, not just theology and spirituality. He proposes a four-stage model of faith development in which questions and doubt are not the enemy of faith, but rather a portal to a more mature and fruitful kind of faith. The four stages—Simplicity, Complexity, Perplexity, and Harmony—offer a path forward that can help sincere and thoughtful people leave behind unnecessary baggage and intensify their commitment to what matters most.

Folkloric American Witchcraft and the Multicultural Experience: A Crucible at the Crossroads by Via Hedera

Witchcraft and magic in America is an inherently multicultural experience and the folklore of our ancestors from every country converges here at a crossroads. It’s a complicated history; one of uncertainty and fear, displacement and enslavement, merging and migration. Our ancestors may not have agreed on how they saw the world or the magic that inhabits the world, but they shared a very real fear of Witches. Hags, Devils, charms and spells; witchery is rooted in our deepest superstitions and folklore. The traditions of people and their cultures stretch and intersect across the country and this is where the unique traditions of American witchcraft and magic are born.

As practitioners seek to revive and reconstruct the paths of our ancestors, we’ve begun to trace the interconnected roots of witchcraft folklore as it emerged in the Americas, from the blending of people and their faiths. For multiracial practitioners, this is part of our identity as Americans and as witches of this country. Folkloric American Witchcraft and the Multicultural Experience is an exploration of the folklore, magic and witchcraft that was forged in the New World.

The Gravity of Joy: A Story of Being Lost and Found by Angela Williams Gorrell

“My vocation was supposed to be joy, and I was speaking at funerals.”

Shortly after being hired by Yale University to study joy, Angela Gorrell got word that a close family member had died by suicide. Less than a month later, she lost her father to a fatal opioid addiction and her nephew, only twenty-two years old, to sudden cardiac arrest. The theoretical joy she was researching at Yale suddenly felt shallow and distant—completely unattainable in the fog of grief she now found herself in.

But joy was closer at hand than it seemed. As she began volunteering at a women’s maximum-security prison, she met people who suffered extensively yet still showed a tremendous capacity for joy. Talking with these women, many of whom had struggled with addiction and suicidal thoughts themselves, she realized: “Joy doesn’t obliterate grief. . . . Instead, joy has a mysterious capacity to be felt alongside sorrow and even—sometimes most especially—in the midst of suffering.”

This is the story of Angela’s discovery of an authentic, grounded Christian joy. But even more, it is an invitation for others to seize upon this more resilient joy as a counteragent to the twenty-first-century epidemics of despair, addiction, and suicide—a call to action for communities that yearn to find joy and are willing to “walk together through the shadows” to find it.

The In-Between Place: Where Jesus Changes Your Story by Kat Armstrong

Jesus’ journey to the woman at the well in Samaria offers insights and hope for women today to make peace with the past, find hope in the present, and step into the future.

God wants us to move toward the goodness He has planned for us. But what do we do when challenges stop our forward momentum? What’s the next step when we fall into a pit of despair with the determination knocked right out of us?

On his way from Judea to Galilee, Jesus traveled through Samaria, a broken place everyone knew to avoid. In Samaria he stopped in Shechem, where evil had gained such a foothold of power that it eventually reigned. Yet the place once condemned as somewhere no one wanted to visit—let alone hang out in for a while—was the location of one Samaritan woman’s most hope-filled encounter with the Savior.

The In-Between Place offers deeply important insights to anyone who feels stuck and can’t see a way forward. It is for the person who feels that if she looks left, her face will be scraped by an immovable boulder, and if she looks right, she’ll see nothing but hard to handle. It’s for the person who feels lost and is not sure she is worth the effort to be found, for the person who feels overlooked and unfulfilled. Because sometimes Jesus saves our greatest spiritual breakthroughs for our in-between places.

Win the Day: 7 Daily Habits to Help You Stress Less & Accomplish More by Mark Batterson

The New York Times bestselling author of Chase the Lion reveals seven powerful habits that can help you tackle God-sized goals by turning yesterday’s regrets and tomorrow’s anxieties into fuel for a better today.

Too many people delay, downsize, or shrug off their dreams just because they don’t know where to start, but playing it safe doesn’t account for the massive cost of a life not fully lived. Win the Day is the jump-start you need to go after your goals, one day at a time. You’ll discover how to:

1. Flip the Script: If you want to change your life, start by changing your story.
2. Kiss the Wave: The obstacle is not the enemy; the obstacle is the way.
3. Eat the Frog: If you want God to do the super, you’ve got to do the natural.
4. Fly the Kite: How you do anything is how you’ll do everything.
5. Cut the Rope: Playing it safe is risky.
6. Wind the Clock: Time is measured in minutes; life is measured in moments.
7. Seed the Clouds: Sow today what you want to see tomorrow.

As Batterson unpacks each of these daily habits, you’ll see how simple it is to pursue them with focus and dedication—not someday down the road, but now. Transform your perspective of a single day and you’ll discover the potential waiting to be grasped at the beginning of each new sunrise.

Sanctuary by Paola Mendoza

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Paola Mendoza and Abby Sher have co-written a young adult novel called Sanctuary . This book takes place in a near future where a family struggles to find help and hope under a xenophobic government.

In 2032, all citizens living in America are chipped. The government is able to track your every movement with mandatory checkpoints everywhere from grocery stores to buses to schools. The chips control your life. If you’re an undocumented immigrant, life is a daily struggle. Sure, counterfeit chips exist, but there is always a risk that they will malfunction giving away your location and bringing Deportation Forces running to rip you away from your family.

Sixteen-year old Vali and her family have managed to create a happy life together until the day it all explodes around them. Her mother’s chip has started malfunctioning and they know it’s only a matter of time before the Deportation Forces take her away. With increasing raids, they are forced to flee.

On the run across the county, Vali, her younger brother, and her mother are desperate to make it to her tía Luna’s in California. California has made itself a sanctuary state, much to the anger of the current administration who is in the process of walling off that state from the rest of the country. When their mother is detained, Vali and Ernie are left on their own to travel across the entire United States on the hope that someone will be waiting on the other end to save them. With Deportation Forces closing in around them again, Vali will do anything to make sure they find their mom and make it to sanctuary.