Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Here If You Need Me: A True Story

by Kate Braestrup

Ten years ago, Kate Braestrup and her husband Drew were enjoying the life they shared together. They had four young children, and Drew, a Maine state trooper, would soon begin training to become a minister as well. Then early one morning Drew left for work and everything changed. On the very roads that he protected every day, an oncoming driver lost control, and Kate lost her husband. Stunned and grieving,... (more)

Whatever Makes You Happy: A Novel

by Lisa Grunwald

What does it take to be happy? How happy is happy enough? And what does “happy” mean, anyway? So asks Sally Farber–wife, mother, daughter, friend, working woman, and lover–in this wise and funny novel about a woman’s search for happiness in some of the right, and a few of the wrong, places. Summer in the city looms long for Sally Farber when she sends her two daughters off to camp for the first time. Suddenly... (more)

The Good Mother: A Novel

by Sue Miller

Recently divorced, Anna Dunlap has two passionate attachments: her daughter, four-year-old Molly, and her lover, Leo, the man who makes her feel beautiful -- and sexual -- for the first time. Swept away by happiness and passion, Anna feels she has everything she's ever wanted. Then come the shocking charges that would threaten her new love, her new "family" ... that force her to prove she is a good mother.

The Truth of the Matter

by Robb Forman Dew

Agnes Scofield, the heroine of Dew's lovely, low-key period piece, can join Mrs. Ramsay and Mrs. Bridge at the tea table of exquisitely etched literary matrons. A respectable Ohio widow with three grown children, Agnes is beginning to carve out an independent middle-aged life for herself (which includes a secret lover) when, in 1947, her children all suddenly return to town. They have full lives of their own,... (more)

First Impressions: Creating Wow Experiences In Your Church

First Impressions: Creating Wow Experiences In Your Church

by Mark L. Waltz

Before a service even begins, first-time guests usually decide whether they'll return to your church. This means church leaders need to create no-fail; practical ways to ensure a visitor's first impre

The Externally Focused Church

by Rick Rusaw

Learn from churches that have made serving their communities a priority--with dramatic results. Your church can be a firm pillar in your community because of the unwavering truth and love of its membe

Mystery Ride

by Robert Boswell

A thoughtful, funny, and penetrating portrait of a modern American family that explores the breaches and bonds between husbands and wives, parents and children--and introduces one of the most incorrigible and affecting teenagers since Holden Caulfield.

Ministry of Helps Handbook

by Buddy Bell

Helps, Having enough Loving People Serving! Churches need the ministry of helps. The time has come for church members to begin doing the work for the ministry, and let the pastors return to being what they have been called to do--be spokesmen for Jesus. Finally, a book filled with useful information for many: * Ushers * Greeters * Nursery Workers * Counselors * all areas of your... (more)

Go Big: Lead Your Church to Explosive Growth

Go Big: Lead Your Church to Explosive Growth

by William M. Easum

Lynelle by the Sea: A Novel

by Laurie Lico Albanese

So begins Laurie Albanese's haunting debut novel about the shattering impact of a child's kidnapping on two women-and two families. Grief-stricken after the death of her infant daughter, Lynelle Carter leaves her husband and their working-class life in New Jersey and returns home to Florida. As she wanders the beaches of Singing Island, she sees an infant in a stroller, alone under a tree... Annie Thompson is... (more)

Lord, Save Us From Your Followers: Why is the Gospel of Love Dividing America?

Lord, Save Us From Your Followers: Why is the Gospel of Love Dividing America?

by Dan Merchant

Why is the Gospel of Love dividing America? Fed up with the angry, strident language filling the airwaves that has come to represent the Christian faith, author, director, and follower Dan Merchant set out to explore the collision of faith and culture in America. What is all this fighting really about? The book and upcoming documentary represent a two-year effort to "join the battlefield in hopes of getting a... (more)

Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World

Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World

by Vicki Myron

How much of an impact can an animal have? How many lives can one cat touch? How is it possible for an abandoned kitten to transform a small library, save a classic American town, and eventually become famous around the world? You can't even begin to answer those questions until you hear the charming story of Dewey Readmore Books, the beloved library cat of Spencer , Iowa . Dewey's story starts in the worst... (more)

Hope Lives: A Journey of Restoration

by Amber Van Schooneveld

Compassion changes everything: how you view your world...yourself...even Jesus. This five-week exploration of compassion is aimed at both head and heart, inspiring a new way to interact with the world. These 25 daily readings address poverty of the heart, what the Bible says about poverty, prayer, discovering the causes of poverty, and becoming part of the solution to local and global poverty. Powerful--and... (more)

Justice Project, The (emersion: Emergent Village resources for communities of faith)

Justice Project, The (emersion: Emergent Village resources for communities of faith)

by Brian McLaren, Elisa Padilla, Ashley Bunting Seeber

Justice and the call for change are in the air. Whether it's extreme poverty, human rights, racism, or the Middle East, news outlets bombard us with stories about the need for justice in the world. But how are Christians to respond to these stories and the conditions to which they refer? Here's help. Editors Brian McLaren, Elisa Padilla, and Ashley Bunting Seeber have amassed a collection of over 30 brief... (more)

True North

by Jim Harrison

An epic tale that pits a son against the legacy of his family's desecration of the earth, and his own father's more personal violations, Jim Harrison's True North is a beautiful and moving novel that speaks to the territory in our hearts that calls us back to our roots. The scion of a family of wealthy timber barons, David Burkett has grown up with a father who is a malevolent force and a mother made vague and... (more)

Simple.: The Christian Life Doesn't Have to Be Complicated

Simple.: The Christian Life Doesn't Have to Be Complicated

by Robert J. Morgan

The Mammoth Cheese

by Sheri Holman

An Our Town for our times, The Mammoth Cheese is beautifully crafted and driven by warm, vibrant characters as it follows the residents of rural Three Chimneys, Virginia, on their journey to re-create the original Thomas Jefferson-era, 1,235-pound "Mammoth Cheese." As the book opens, the town is joyously celebrating the birth of the Frank Eleven: eleven babies simultaneously born to Manda and James Frank after... (more)

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