Close Up: Sharon A. Hersh

Latest project: Begin Again, Believe Again: Embracing the Courage to Love With Abandon (Zondervan).

Resides in: Lone Tree, Colo.

You have addressed women in this book, but who in that group were you particularly writing for? "For women who have dreamed and hoped and prayed and believed in relationships and have experienced the inevitable disappointment, difficulty and even heartbreak that can come as we live and love in relationships, and we get discouraged. We have conflicts that we can't resolve. We have children who go different directions than we originally dream of. We get lonely and we give up. This book is to encourage women to begin again and believe again."

You observe that relationships are often the source of our pain. What is the place of pain in our lives? "I do think it is in relationships, as we encounter difficulties or dreams that are shattered or a heartbreak that comes because we do want too much in relationships. And where we get into trouble is we begin to believe that this ache for more is only to be experienced in human relationships rather than understanding that this beautiful ache for more is really intended to take us from the human relationship to the divine relationship."

Music journalist and biographer Steve Turner moves beyond gospel's stereotypic robed choirs to offer a history of music that has given voice to African-Americans—and shaped musical forms such as blues and rock 'n' roll—in An Illustrated History of Gospel: Gospel Music From Early Spirituals to Contemporary Urban (978-0-745-95339-7, $29.95, Lion Books/Kregel Publications).

Illustrated throughout with photographs and memorabilia, the 208-page hardcover volume tells the story of gospel in a period when social and economic changes were taking place in America. Surveying the development of gospel over a century and a half, from slave plantations in the 19th century to segregation in the 20th century to the public arenas of the 21st, Turner seeks to provide "a good and easily readable introduction" to the genre.

Accessible guide addresses questions Christians most fear being asked

Known for his Contagious Christian series, apologist and best-selling author Mark Mittelberg aims to help believers stop avoiding hard questions in their witness for Christ, in The Questions Christians Hope No One Will Ask (With Answers).

Encouraging his fellow Christians to "do some extra reading, do some extra study," Mittelberg reminds readers of I Peter 3:15, which "commands all of us as believers to be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks for the reason for the hope that we have"—and he sets out to help.

Working with David Kinnaman, president of the Barna Group, and Tyndale House Publishers, 1,000 Christians were asked what issues they were most afraid non-Christians would raise in conversation about faith. Knowing that they might encounter these questions, Mittelberg says, means that Christians often avoid addressing faith issues out of fear.

Latest project: A Million Ways to Die: The Only Way to Live (David C. Cook).

Resides in: West Chester, Pa.

Where did the book’s title come from? “We here in America aren’t faced with martyrdom on a regular basis and yet that’s the death that Scripture calls us to ... the little deaths that occur in our day, whether it’s death to self or humbling ourselves.”

Jesus called his followers to take up their cross every day. Is that what you mean? “We are, to put it bluntly, a piñata. The Spirit of God is in us and the more you beat the thing, the more life comes out, so it really is a daily thing of embracing these little deaths and allowing the life of Christ to shine out and then through us.”

Disabled motivational speaker shares his ‘ridiculously good life’ lessons

Twenty-seven-year-old Nick Vujicic was born with no arms and no legs, and yet he has learned what it means to have a “ridiculously good life.”

“I’m officially disabled, but I’m truly enabled because of my lack of limbs,” Vujicic writes in Life Without Limits: Inspiration for a Ridiculously Good Life.

Attributing this positive attitude in spite of his physical limitations to his “beautiful God,” he learned that “there’s a greater purpose for all things.” Still, it took this son of an Australian preacher a while to get to that perspective.

If Philip Yancey were a musician, his latest book, What Good is God? In Search of a Faith That Matters (978-0-446-55985-0, $23.99, FaithWords) might in some ways be considered a remastered or live greatest-hits package.

Releasing this month and subtitled “In Search of a Faith That Matters,” the 304-page collection of essays and talks finds him revisiting some topics and events that will be familiar to readers of some of his best-selling titles and other writings, but finding new life and light in them.