Adult Fiction
A Bend in the River by Libby Fischer Hellmann.
In 1968 two young
Vietnamese sisters flee to Saigon after their village on the Mekong River is
attacked by American forces and burned to the ground. The sole survivors of the
brutal massacre that killed their family, the sisters struggle to survive but
become estranged, separated by sharply different choices and ideologies. Mai
ekes out a living as a GI bar girl, but Tam's anger festers, and she heads into
jungle terrain to fight with the Viet Cong. For nearly ten years, neither
sister knows if the other is alive. Do they both survive the war? And if they
do, can they mend their fractured relationship? Or are the wounds from their
journeys too deep to heal?
The Pope’s Butcher by Joseph C. Gioconda.
Abandoned as a child and
raised by the Church, young Sebastian works tirelessly in his pursuit of priesthood.
But when a shadowy hooded figure passes him a scroll, his careful plans face a
turning point. It appears his name has drawn the attention of the Inquisition
and his attendance is commanded at once—for retribution, information, or
something else, he does not know. Father Heinrich Institoris the Grand
Inquisitor is lauded as a visionary man, driven by a burning desire to cleanse
the world of Eve’s original sin by eradicating witches. As Inquisition courts
bloom across Europe, he vows to leave no stone unturned, no hovel unexamined,
and no woman alive, in his search for justice. As the Inquisitor’s violent
mission unfolds, Sebastian embarks on a quest through dank crypts, crumbling
abbeys, and the darkest depravities known to man. Torn between duty and love
when he encounters the beautiful pagan Brigantia, he fights to uncover the
truth: of his past abandonment, the power of the occult, and just how far he’ll
go to protect the Church he loves. A Church that is harboring deadly secrets.
A Season of Change by Beth Wiseman.
Finding peace means
letting go of the past--and embracing the change that is to come. Sisters
Esther and Lizzie have a new employee, Rose Petersheim, to help them tend to
The Peony Inn. But their old matchmaking ways have stayed the same. The sisters
focus their efforts on the lovely twenty-five-year-old Rose. Though Rose is
witty and outspoken, her nervous chattering makes her the best match for
someone calm and good at listening. Someone like Benjamin--the handsome handyman
who recently moved to town. But when Esther receives an anonymous love letter
and flowers, Rose's love life is no longer the only one capturing the sisters'
attention. As they sleuth around searching for Esther's secret admirer, they
uncover that their grumpy renter, Gus, has a secret of his own that could bring
about a difficult change in all their lives. And their continued meddling in
Rose's affairs reveals she, too, is hiding something--an old wound that could
threaten her future happiness. As Rose, Lizzie, Esther, and Gus struggle
to release the weight of their pasts, they discover that although people are
complicated, love doesn't need to be.
Adult Non-Fiction
Stability by Nathan Oates.
What is the foundation of
work that lasts? As Christians in a hypermobile culture, most of the time
we talk about going and doing, about the need for meaningful action, service,
and pilgrimage. Here, we listen to a quieter call. We consider the foundation,
the roots, the bass note, that place of origin from which the building rises
and the fruit blooms and the music soars and all the action comes--the place of
stability. This call is rooted in the being of God; the faithfulness,
reliability, and unchanging character of God. Drawing from some of the
best writings on Benedictine spirituality and from his personal
experiences raising a family, pastoring a church, and spending time living with
monks, Nathan Oates offers a compelling invitation to find inner peace and
stillness right where we are. When faced with decisions to stay or go, we
rarely consider a beautiful, challenging third option--embracing the value of
stability, which is moving closer to the root. Rather than
pulling up our tents or simply enduring, we can choose to press deeper into the
core of the question, to lean into the source of life, the real need, the true
passion.
The Family Roe by Joshua Prager.
Despite her famous
pseudonym, "Jane Roe," no one knows the truth about Norma McCorvey
(1947-2017), whose unwanted pregnancy in 1969 opened a great fracture in
American life. Journalist Joshua Prager spent hundreds of hours with Norma,
discovered her personal papers--a previously unseen trove--and witnessed her
final moments. The Family Roe presents her life in full. Propelled by
the crosscurrents of sex and religion, gender and class, it is a life that
tells the story of abortion in America. Prager begins that story on the banks
of Louisiana's Atchafalaya River where Norma was born, and where unplanned
pregnancies upended generations of her forebears. A pregnancy then upended
Norma's life too, and the Dallas waitress became Jane Roe. Drawing on a decade
of research, Prager reveals the woman behind the pseudonym, writing in
novelistic detail of her unknown life from her time as a sex worker in Dallas,
to her private thoughts on family and abortion, to her dealings with feminist
and Christian leaders, to the three daughters she placed for adoption. Prager
found those women, including the youngest--Baby Roe--now fifty years old. She
shares her story in The Family Roe for the first time, from her
tortured interactions with her birth mother, to her emotional first meeting
with her sisters, to the burden that was uniquely hers from conception. The
Family Roe abounds in such revelations--not only about Norma and her
children but about the broader "family" connected to the case. Prager
tells the stories of activists and bystanders alike whose lives intertwined
with Roe. In particular, he introduces three figures as important as they are
unknown: feminist lawyer Linda Coffee, who filed the original Texas lawsuit yet
now lives in obscurity; Curtis Boyd, a former fundamentalist Christian, today a
leading provider of third-trimester abortions; and Mildred Jefferson, the first
black female Harvard Medical School graduate, who became a pro-life leader with
great secrets. An epic work spanning fifty years of American history, The
Family Roe will change the way you think about our enduring American
divide: the right to choose or the right to life.
Easy/Juvenile/Young Adult/Graphic Novel
Turtles All the Way
Down by John Green. YA
Aza Holmes never intended
to pursue the disappearance of fugitive billionaire Russell Pickett, but
there's a hundred-thousand-dollar reward at stake and her Best and Most
Fearless Friend, Daisy, is eager to investigate. So together, they navigate the
short distance and broad divides that separate them from Pickett's son
Davis. Aza is trying. She is trying to be a good daughter, a good friend,
a good student, and maybe even a good detective, while also living within the
ever-tightening spiral of her own thoughts.
The Waiting by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim. GN
Keum Suk Gendry-Kim was an
adult when her mother revealed a family secret: She had been separated from her
sister during the Korean War. It's not an uncommon story--the peninsula was
split across the 38th parallel, dividing one country into two. As many fled
violence in the north, not everyone was able to make it south. Her mother's
story inspired Gendry-Kim to begin interviewing her and other Koreans separated
by the war; that research fueled a deeply resonant graphic novel. The
Waiting is the fictional story of Gwija, told by her novelist daughter
Jina. When Gwija was 17 years old, after hearing that the Japanese were seizing
unmarried girls, her family married her in a hurry to a man she didn't know.
Japan fell, Korea gained its independence, and the couple started a family. But
peace didn't come. The young family of four fled south. On the road, while
breastfeeding and changing her daughter, Gwija was separated from her husband
and son. Then seventy years passed. Seventy years of waiting. Gwija is now an
elderly woman and Jina can't stop thinking about the promise she made to help
find her brother.
