Adult

For five hard years, Christian leader Kevin Myers struggled personally and professionally. But it was during that time that God pointed out where he was going wrong and showed him the biblical pattern for living. During that time, John Maxwell also became his mentor. Together, using a baseball diamond as an analogy for following God's plan for life, Myers and Maxwell provide a clear path forward while helping you keep your priorities in order and your eyes on the prize.

The Christian life is often defined as "no." What starts with a desire to reject destructive things morphs into a "no" to people, enjoyment, laughter, pleasure, success, and ultimately life itself. Ecclesiastes, through Solomon's journals, gives us a huge dose of reality. Solomon's entire experience is a counterintuitive "yes" to God and every aspect of life. THE GOD OF YES explores this approach and provides clear application on how faith can infuse meaning to the monotony of everyday life.

The 1898 Omaha World’s Fair has just concluded. In a small Nebraska town, a Civil War balloon formerly on display at the Fair lands on the home of two elderly sisters. The pilot is Ferret Skerritt, a young ventriloquist. In THE SWAN GONDOLA, Ferret tells the sisters the story of his romance with an actress who worked at the Chamber of Horrors, and of the wealthy magnate who tried to insinuate himself into their affair.

As a teen, Patience Bloom fell in love with Harlequin novels and imagined her life would turn out just like the heroines’ on the page. Years later, she moved to New York and found her dream job: editing romances for Harlequin. Bloom became an expert when it came to fictional love stories, but her dating life remained uninspired. Then one day, a real-life chance at romance made her wonder if what she’d been writing and editing all those years might be true.

In the late 19th century, two brothers from one of the nation's great families --- Henry Melville Whitney of Boston and William Collins Whitney of New York --- pursued the dream of his city digging America's first subway, and the great race was on. The competition between Boston and New York played out in an era not unlike our own: one of economic upheaval, life-changing innovations, class warfare, bitter political tensions, and the question of America’s place in the world.

Why exactly Charley Bordelon’s late father left her 800 sprawling acres of sugarcane land in rural Louisiana is as mysterious as it was generous. Recognizing this as a chance to start over, Charley and her 11-year-old daughter, Micah, say good-bye to Los Angeles. They arrive just in time for growing season, but no amount of planning can prepare Charley for a Louisiana that’s mired in the past.

With everything happening on Helen Peppe’s backwoods Maine farm --- ferocious sibling rivalry, rock-bottom poverty, feral male chauvinism, sex in the hayloft --- life was out of control, even for the animals. Despite the chaos, in telling her family’s story, Peppe manages deadpan humor, an unerring eye for the absurd, and a touching compassion for her utterly overwhelmed parents.

Finding inspiration in questions from the nature of perfection to the icing on carrot cake, actor B. J. Novak’s debut short story collection has at its heart the most human of phenomena: love, fear, hope, ambition, and the inner stirring for the one elusive element that just might make a person complete.

Abraham Lincoln’s official secretaries, John Hay and John Nicolay, enjoyed more access, witnessed more history, and knew Lincoln better than anyone outside of the president’s immediate family. As Joshua Zeitz shows, the image of a humble man with uncommon intellect who rose from obscurity to become a storied wartime leader and emancipator is very much their creation.

When a mysterious woman nearly runs Leo Maxwell down, then appears at his office and asks him to defend her brother on a murder charge, Leo thinks he’s found the case that will make his name. One problem: he hasn’t actually met the client. And after taking a series of photographs that seem to blow the lid on corruption in the police department, Leo quickly learns that all is not as it seems --- beginning with the alluring woman who hired him.