 TOP PICK - FICTION
Where Do I Go?
Neta Jackson
Thomas Nelson
softcover, 352 pages, $14.99
978-1-595-54523-7
Jackson, the author behind the popular “Yada Yada Prayer Group” series, scores a home run with her spinoff series’ first title, Where Do I Go? A Yada Yada House of Hope Novel, a gripping story of family friction and division. Wife and mother Gabrielle “Gabby” Fairbanks has been recently transplanted to Chicago from Virginia due to husband Phillip’s job change. She literally stumbles over a homeless woman in front of her high-rise apartment building and is eventually led to a women’s shelter where she finds her purpose. She finds fulfillment as the shelter’s social director, while Phillip objects to her job, considering it unsuitable for the wife of an up-and-coming executive. Additional family troubles leave her frustrated, getting little or no help from her social-climbing mate. True-to-life fiction tackling topics such as homelessness and marital struggles make this book a sure-fire hit. Especially of interest to those who have a heart for the homeless, it would also be appealing to anyone in search of fulfilling their own purpose in serving others.
—Beth Anderson BIOGRAPHY Rex
Cathleen Lewis
Thomas Nelson
hardcover, 256 pages, $24.99
978-1-595-55150-4
Rex: A Mother, Her Autistic Child, and the Music That Transformed Their Lives is the story of a family’s dark, personal struggle with severe disabilities, with the God who allows them and with what it means to walk by faith. With almost brutal transparency, Lewis shares her heart-wrenching story of the challenges of raising an autistic child as a single mother and the uphill battle for family advocacy. Readers will feel Lewis’ desperation as she attempts to help Rex connect with the world. They will also find joyous relief at the uniquely beautiful evidence of God’s strength in Rex’s weakness as music shatters the barriers of autism and opens the way for his personality to shine through.
For every parent who struggles with how to give a disabled child a fighting chance, Rex’s story will bring comfort and promise. For everyone else, it will be an education, leaving readers with a transformed understanding of autism and its effects.
—Deborah Finnamore FICTION
Every Now & Then
Karen Kingsbury
Zondervan
softcover, 320 pages, $14.99
978-0-310-26615-0
Every Now & Then, the third title in Kingsbury’s “9/11 Series,” continues the story of Jamie Bryan, widowed in the terrorist attack in New York City and now remarried and living in Los Angeles. Through her late husband, Clay, Jamie has met Alex Brady, another 9/11 victim and a member of the K-9 unit of the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department. Alex’s father was one of the firefighters who died that day, radically changing young Alex’s life. Now he feels his only salvation is in his determination to rid the world of evildoers, but in the process he leaves no room for anything or anyone else, including Holly, the love of his life. Alex’s bravery borders on recklessness, and understanding the pain that drives him all too well, Jamie fears for Alex’s life.
Kingsbury has received accolades from many of the survivors of 9/11 for her insight into the lives touched by the events. In Every Now & Then she continues to demonstrate the compassion that comes from seeking God’s guidance in dealing with tragedy.
—Sandra Furlong MARRIAGE
The Soul-Mate Marriage
David and Lisa Frisbie
Harvest House Publishers
softcover, 250 pages, $13.99
978-0-736-92245-6
More TV is not what one would think about when seeking to strengthen a marriage, but this is what David Frisbie, marriage and family counselor, and co-author of The Soul-Mate Marriage: The Spiritual Journey of Becoming One with his wife, Lisa, recommends to his readers. TV is an acronym for transparency and vulnerability—two qualities, he says, that are imperative for a successful covenant relationship with one’s spouse.
The authors, who interviewed a number of couples successful in marriage, share real-life scenarios, both pre- and post-marriage. With the divorce rate higher than ever, they work to bring to life the aspect of unconditional love in marriage. They explain common misconceptions regarding submission and suggest selfless tasks for marriage partners. The Soul-Mate Marriage is appropriate reading for couples considering marriage or for those striving for a better one. It offers loving admonition and encouragement for spouses to stay faithful to one another, to commit each day to God while dying to the flesh and watching Christ prevail through restoration and maturity in the marriage.
—Heidi L. Ippolito SOCIAL ISSUES Virtual Integrity
Daniel J. Lohrmann
Brazos Press (Baker Publishing Group)
softcover, 208 pages, $14.99
978-1-587-43234-7
Computer security expert Lohrmann gives a Christian view of the Internet in Virtual Integrity: Faithfully Navigating the Brave New Web. While he takes a comprehensive approach, portions of the book could soon become obsolete with the advent of new technology, and he largely leaves it to the reader to decide how Jesus would surf online. In surveying threats, Lohrmann mentions the immoral (gambling, pornography), the questionable (dating sites, video games) and the risky (viruses, e-scams), but dwells more on the seemingly innocuous. Even news or shopping sites, the author stresses, can be dangerous if they distract from real-life responsibilities. Lohrmann is no technophobe, however; his philosophy is that Christians’ online and offline lives should be in sync. Virtual Integrity offers resources for programs that steer users from
temptation and hold them accountable for their online actions.
—John D. Leatherman THEOLOGY The Blue Parakeet
Scot McKnight
Zondervan
hardcover, 240 pages, $18.99
978-0-310-28488-8
A professor of religious studies for Chicago’s North Park University, McKnight has made it his life’s work to study the Bible. In his more than 30 years in education, he has developed one main question—“How, then, are we to live out the Bible today?”—which he addresses in The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible. Examining how Christians often respond to the Bible’s “contentious issues,” McKnight uses a metaphor of his pet parakeet and how the sparrows in his backyard reacted to it (scared, then adjusted), just as Christians tend to avoid or adapt to issues like keeping the Sabbath or foot washing. McKnight doesn’t take sides on the issues—except for women in ministry, which he favors—but guides believers, using cultural context and tradition, toward a better understanding of the Bible.
—Cara Davis
The Erosion of Inerrancy in
Evangelicalism
G.K. Beale
Crossway Books & Bibles
softcover, 304 pages, $20
978-1-433-50203-3 Beale, professor of New Testament and Biblical Studies at Wheaton College, confronts head-on the debate between postmodernism, a philosophy that denies objective truth, and inerrancy, which claims that the Bible is free from error, in The Erosion of Inerrancy in Evangelicalism: Responding to New Challenges to Biblical Authority.
Beale dialogues with the works of Peter Enns, who subscribes to a progressive view of the Scriptures. Beale delves into issues such as the contested authorship of Isaiah and the scientific cosmology of the Old Testament, but ultimately sides with the traditional perspective as articulated in the 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, signed by nearly 300 evangelical scholars.
Pastors and interested laypersons will appreciate Beale’s work, which may find its true home in academic environments.
—C. Brian Smith 
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