Next Reads: Contemporary Christian Fiction: Home

Happily-ever-after librarian Alice Ripley unexpectedly finds herself in a real-life adventure filled with mystery and romance in the 1930's as she serves rural communities.

The plane crash nearly ended Lynda’s life. Was it an accident or sabotage? Lynda Barrett, a young lawyer, hates to sell her plane, but she can no longer afford to keep it. Enter Jake Stevens: wealthy, arrogant, and interested in buying Lynda’s beloved Piper. Together, he and Lynda embark on a test flight that ends in disaster--hurling them into a terrifying sequence of events. One thing becomes clear: Someone is out to get Lynda...

From the bestselling author of Crossing Oceans comes a powerfully moving story that tests the limits of love’s forgiveness. Like many marriages, Eric and Kyra Yoshida’s has fallen apart slowly, one lost dream and misunderstanding at a time, until the ultimate betrayal finally pushes them beyond reconciliation. Just when it looks like forgive and forget is no longer an option, a car accident gives Eric the second chance of a lifetime. A concussion causes his wife to forget details of her life, including the chasm between them. No one knows when―or if―Kyra’s memory will return, but Eric seizes the opportunity to win back the woman he’s never stopped loving.

Josie Mitchell's sister Laurel thinks she's come home to pitch in with the apple harvest and save the family orchard. Her brother-in-law Nate thinks she's there to talk the overworked, very pregnant Laurel into finally selling the family business. The orchard's new manager Grady Mackenzie just thinks she's trouble with a capital T. They're all right . . . and all wrong. Because no one really knows what drove Josie from home in the first place. Why she's never come home before, even for her own father's funeral.

What do an ex-con, a former drug addict, a real estate broker, a college student and a married mother of two have in common?
Nothing, or so I thought. Who would have imagined that God would make a prayer group as mismatched as ours the closest of friends? I almost didn’t even go to the Chicago Women’s Conference—after all, being thrown together with five hundred strangers wasn’t exactly my “comfort zone.” But something happened that weekend to make us realize we had to hang together, and the Yada Yada Prayer Group” was born!
Also available in Audio Book

Mary Madison is educated and redeemed, a powerful voice in Washington, D.C. But she also has a past that shamed polite society. A survivor of unspeakable horror, Mary has battled paralyzing fear, faithlessness, addiction, and promiscuity. Yet even in her darkest valley, Mary was sustained from afar, prayed over by a grandmother who clung to the belief that God had special plans for Mary.
Also available in Large Print

Hunter Greene has worked hard to become the owner of a successful Atlanta newspaper. When a much-loved pastor is killed in a car crash, the pastor's daughter, Jade, convinces him it was murder. But as Hunter investigates, he finds the community turning against him, even as he falls deeply in love with Jade...

When her husband Liam is killed by a car bomb while their Celtic band is on tour in Charleston, singer and Irish beauty Alanna doesn’t quite know where to turn. Her father-in-law is threatening to take custody of the baby she carries, but Alanna knows she can’t lose the only piece of Liam she has left. Alanna’s manager offers her a marriage of convenience to obtain U.S. citizenship and allow her to escape her father-in-law’s control. It seems like the perfect solution until she arrives at the family home of her new husband—a decaying mansion with more questions than answers. Strange things begin happening that threaten Alanna’s life and the life of her child. Are they merely coincidences?

The amnesiac patient in the makeshift Amazon hospital looks familiar to visiting American nurse Amy Graham. This isn't the first time she's seen those blue-gray eyes, the hard lines of his handsome face. When Amy sees his birthmark, she knows exactly who he is: Micah McKnight, the presumed-dead Navy SEAL. Her best friend's brother. The man her own mother set up to die.
Amy can't bear to tell him the dangerous truth about his hidden past. But her secrets are about to explode, because now someone is after them both.

Brought together by unexpected circumstances, Derek and Brooklyn must both confront challenges to their dreams and expectations. He must overcome long held misconceptions about Brooklyn, while she must learn to trust someone other than herself. And if they can do it, they just might discover that God has something better in mind than either of them ever imagined.

Photographer Taylor Branson left her hometown of Heart’s Bend, Tennessee, to make a new life for herself in New York. She had lots to run away from, not least of all a family history of broken promises and broken dreams. Love catches Taylor off guard when she falls for Jack Forester, a successful advertising executive, and their whirlwind romance leads to an elopement—then to second guesses. Jack, in spite of his very real love for Taylor, is battling his own demons and struggles to show her his true self and the depths of his love for her.

Housewife Laura Dunn and her workaholic husband, advertising executive Donnie Dunn, have been married for 23 years. As Donnie’s business thrives and their daughter, Stasha, plans her wedding, Laura longs for new possibilities. Could the dreams God planted in her heart years ago—like to become an artist—still be part of her purpose? Is there a new life of faith on the other side of this struggle?

One final cry…“God almighty, help us!” and suddenly her world shifted violently, until a blinding collision scattered her mind and shook her bones. Then, the pain. The freezing water. And as all sensation drifted away, a hand reached for hers, before all faded into darkness…
Now she has awakened as though from some strange, suffocating dream in a warm and welcoming room she has never seen before, and tended to by kind, unfamiliar faces. But not all has been swept away. She recalls fragments of the accident. She remembers a baby. And a ring on her finger reminds her of a lie.

Audrey Eaton awakes at three in the morning and gets up to retrieve her husband, Tom, from the recliner where he has fallen asleep watching a ball game. But when she enters the living room and looks at his gentle face in the soft lamp light, she knows their time together is over. Grief attacks her until all she can think about is how much she wants her old life back. Determined to find healing, she embarks on a journey to the one place Tom and she always intended to visit but never did. Along the way, she discovers, through shared experiences with friends old and new, the meaning of the "tender graces" God provides each and every day.