Thanks to those who told us that they found the last Hearts & Minds BookNotes helpful, reviews scattered across style and theme and perspective and price range as it was. It was a fabulous hodgepodge of titles that I said were some of our most anticipated releases of the early Fall. Apparently, some of you had been eager to see them, too. Aren’t you glad for fellow book-lovers who cherish the printed page as some sort of bread and ballast for this complicated journey? Anyway, that was a list of great reads, and I am glad they are all in stock. Visit our archived lists of our previous BookNotes at our website so you don’t miss any.

(As most of you know, we’re closed for in-store shopping, but you can pick them up here at the shop anytime; of course, we are mostly doing mail-order from this online setting. Thank you all for keeping us afloat in these trying days for indie booksellers.)

In this BookNotes we’re listing a baker’s dozen that are not here yet. Some will arrive in the next few days or so, others are a bit farther out, forthcoming, as we say.

You can PRE-ORDER them here, now. All are 20% off.

Remember: you can pre-order anything from us anytime and we are always grateful if you send us a note about whatever you want and whatever you are anticipating. These 13 are just a few that are coming in this season, a handful of the very best that we thought you’d want to consider.

Helpful hack: if you are pre-ordering more than one, or pre-ordering one that is forthcoming along with one that is already released, please tell us if you want us to send them as we are aable, one by one as they trickle in OR if we should hold them together, consolidating them. One is more expedient if you just can’t wait; the other more stewardly, I suppose, saving on shipping costs by bunching them together. They get our discount either way. We’re at your service — just tell us how we can help you best.

I’ll list the official release date of the title. We will get some of them early, I am sure.

Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story – A Port Williams Novel Wendell Berry (Counterpoint) $26.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $20.80

RELEASE DATE October 7, 2025

Wendell Berry hasn’t done a new novel in years and years. He has continued to write award-winning essays, had a collected edition of Sabbath poems released not too long ago, and, of course, did more than one volume of short stories. Many think he is a master of that genre, and adored his most recent, How It Went which was thirteen stories of the Port Williams membership, as he calls those who are part of that small, fictional town. They are members, he famously noted, whether they know it or not.

(In our next “Three Books from Hearts & Minds” podcast I describe three excellent books about the work of Wendell Berry which I think will be fascinating for anyone who reads his work. Look for it at YouTube, Spotify or Apple Podcasts.)

Small town life, rural farming, woodsmanship, ecology, family, faith, duty, and fidelity are all themes in his gentle writing about home and exile and land and aging. His lyricism is famously beautiful as he develops a sense of place. I hope you know his beloved novels, at least Jayber Crow and Hannah Coulter. We can’t wait to get a few more pre-orders for this next novel, a story about an elder in the Andy Catlett family.

Marce has already appeared in a few of the books all set in the Port Williams locale. He’s the father of Wheeler Catlett and the grandfather of Andy (who has a short book about his travels one Christmas to visit his grandparents.)  The new Marce story includes a lot about Andy as he and his brother start the Burley Coulter Tobacco Growers Cooperative to fight the buyer’s greed and abuse.

The publisher has told us this much:

Andy Catlett tells the story of his grandfather and father’s lives and how their stories, recalled by Andy to his own children and grandchildren, become “A Story Unending.” Marce Catlett rises in the dark to go from his farm, by horseback and train, to Louisville for the sale of his tobacco crop at the auction house there. The price paid for each year’s crop is being determined and destroyed by the power of a single buyer, James B. Duke. This year is especially grim since the price offered each grower is less than the expense of bringing the crop to market, and a year’s worth of labor is lost. He returns to his family defeated and determined to discover some way to proceed. Many of his fellow farmers lack the resiliency and resourcefulness to continue, and the end for them is clearly visible. But with the help of other neighbors and growers, a way is discovered to protect the farmers and keep their rural families vital and in place.

It has been called both wistful and granular. Sounds about right. It will be one of the great novels of the year.

Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story releases October 7th in hardcover; 176 pages.

My Beloved: A Mitford Novel Jan Karon (Putnam) $32.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $25.60

RELEASE DATE October 7, 2025

Releasing the same day as the long-awaited Wendell Berry novel is this, the also very long awaited novel about faith and small town life, upbeat and charming in a way Berry’s perhaps is not, exactly, but still beloved by readers of all sorts. The Mitford saga continues — Karon hasn’t done a new novel since 2017 (To Be Where You Are) — and we are sure it will be heartwarming and delightful.  In My Beloved, a very personal letter Father Tim writes somehow goes missing and then goes public and it has a far-reaching (and, apparantly, sometimes quite poignant) effect. Just ask Hope, the town bookseller about that. Can a brush with death be a portal to a happy marriage? This is going to be good for those with a broken heart or longing for deeper hope, I’m sure. And they say it is a storied delight.

Fannie Flagg (author of Fried Green Tomatoes) says “Jan Karon is a national treasure. Prepare to laugh, cry and fall in love all over again…”

My Beloved releases October 7th in hardcover; 432 pages.

Christianity and Intellectual Inquiry: Thinking as Pilgrimage Douglas & Rhonda Hustedt Jacobson (Oxford University Press) $29.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

RELEASE DATE October 10, 2025

The husband and wife duo here are retired, I think, from Messiah University where they have not only had a long and important teaching career, but has spearheaded conversations about how their unique orientation — Messiah in rooted in a pietistic and Anabaptist heritage, although many profs are not exactly in the same evangelical tradition (Jacobson’s are UCC, I believe) — offers a particular sort of vision for what those in Christian higher education have discussed as “the integration of faith and learning.” In the past decades there were many scholarly books and a handful of accessible ones for undergrads or thoughtful others about the Christian mind, the vocation of Christian scholarship, the nature of relating one’s deepest orienting principles to one’s academic research. Many in the largely evangelical movement of distinctively Christian colleges and universities were nearing some sort of a consensus that faculty must profess not only their faith and their professional expertise, but must show somehow how the former influences the latter. And maybe vice-versa.

Artists, scientists, businesspeople, historians, journalists, nurses, engineers, teachers and all the rest of us day-to-day workers are called to have the renewed mind (see Romans 12: 1-2) so we can think well about living faithfully in but not of the world around us, even in our jobs and professional associations.

Messiah profs — decades ago — put out two major works (both Oxford University Press) showing how their unique theological tradition put a certain spin on this project and we still stock both of those, who want a only slightly Anabaptist take on this vocation of Christian scholarship.  But now — wow! — the Jacobson’s are back, doing yet another grand volume less specifically, I gather, for faculty serving in Christian higher education but for any and all of us. What does it mean to be a person of faith and be engaged in authentic intellectual inquiry? How do we know what we think we know and how might we be formed in conversations with others? How might the metaphor of pilgrimage help us in this big project that they’ve tackled here?  They go deep into these sorts of queries.

There are shorter trade paperbacks that address all of this (just see our latest “Three Books from Hearts & Minds” podcast highlighting three really nice books about reading widely and the love of learning) but this major academic work will be a must for those grappling seriously about all of this.

Christianity and Intellectual Inquiry releases October 10th 2025 in hardback; 232 pages.

Everyday Apocalypse: Art, Empire and the End of the World David Dark (Vanderbilt University Press) $24.95 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.96

RELEASE DATE October 15, 2025

I have not seen this forthcoming edition yet, but I will tell you that I admire David as much as any writer working today and enjoy his friendship and often allusive calls to justice and building a better world. I hope you know his extraordinary book I’ve loved since the first edition (where both Eugene Peterson and I had endorsing blurbs), The Sacredness of Asking Questioning Everything. That one naturally gave rise to the even more extraordinary Life’s Too Short to Pretend You Aren’t Religious which he considerably updated a few years back. And then the most robust, creative, remarkable bit of clever and profound social criticism I think I’ve ever read, We Become What We Normalize: What We Owe Each Other in Worlds That Demand Our Silence which should be read more than once and shared with others. I think he read the audio himself, if you like that approach.

This forthcoming one is a considerably re-written, major revision of his much-used and much-loved early work Everyday Apocalypse which was (and is) about pop culture. We have a huge section of such books — dozens of titles exploring faith and philosophy and meaning and hope and danger and goodness within rock and roll, films, video games, advertisements, country music, rap, TV and more. Everyday Apocalypse struck most readers as a perfect blend of edgy Christian insight, honest appreciation for everything from Radiohead to the Simpsons, and a lot of insight about how God’s alternative Kingdom might be better realized if we took seriously the social criticism embedded within many artifacts of popular entertainment. It was and is one of the best in show

Alas, David wants to repent of some things (and I take his use of the word seriously.) He thinks he not only needed to do a contemporary update, but, truly, a rethink. Like with his Life’s Too Short, he has learned some things, changed his mind about some stuff, and added some new intellectual shticks to his repertoire. He’s still fun and even funny, with a wit to match his passion and lament about a world gone wrong. I loved the first version of this book and cannot wait for this alternate version.

And it will have a forward by Ohioan Hanif Abdurraqib, author of There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension and They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us — wow.

I think of one of the most provocative and interesting books of Bible commentary I’ve ever encountered, by David’s friends Brian Walsh & Sylvia Keesmaat, is Romans Disarmed: Doing Justice/Resisting Empire. I wonder if David’s book might be “popular culture disarmed” as we “do justice and resist empire.”  In any case he will celebrate the goodness of the gifts of various cultural artifacts and carry a bit of punchy subversion.

Again, this new edition isn’t a rehash of the older one but, he says, an entirely new book. His Tennessee colleagues at Vanderbilt know him well and he is proud to be published by this storied academic publishing house. We can’t wait to get it in and see what the new edition has to offer. It will, I hope, cause us all to repent a bit. And have fun doing it.

Here’s the new table of contents:

• Foreword by Hanif Abdurraqib
• Chapter 1: Fight The Real Enemy: Apocalyptic & Earthseed & the Lyricism of Protest
• Chapter 2: You Think You Been Redeemed: Flannery O’Connor’s Exploding Junk Pile of Despair
• Chapter 3: Damn Everything But The Circus: Loving The Simpsons
• Chapter 4 Bearing Witness: The Tired Gladness of Radiohead
• Chapter 5: Living in Fiction: The Matrix, The Truman Show, And How to Free Your Mind
• Chapter 6: We’re All Part of the Total Scene: Digging in with Beck
• Chapter 7: Daylight is a Dream If You’ve Lived with Your Eyes Closed: The Cinematic Epiphanies of Joel and Ethan Coen
• Chapter 8: True Garbage: An Exercise in Self-Exhortation

Everyday Apocalypse releases October 10, 2025; 222 pages.

All Things Together: How Apprenticeship to Jesus Is the Way to Flourishing in a Fragmented World Heath Hardesty (Multnomah) $18.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

RELEASE DATE October 14, 2025

There are so many good, and even great, contemporary books, written in breezy prose, and offering good insight about deepening one’s discipleship. Few say much truly new (who needs to, after all?) and many are very fresh to read, even as they draw on ancient truths. I’m so happy about the accesible, yet mature writing, that it is hard to suggest just one or two of the many books about basic Christian living and growing faith in these crazy days.  To be honest, I figured this was another fine and dandy one, and we’d order a few, hoping somebody out there would have heard of it and send us an order. I was happy to do so, but not that excited.

Until I got an advanced copy and in skimming it sensed that this was accessible and fun, and really a cut above most. And then I heard from a literary friend I very much respect who assured me that Hardesty is the really, real deal and his book is a contemporary gem.

So I’ve started it and I fully agree. This is a quiet torrent of good writing and splendid insight, maybe a contemporary sort of Eugene Peterson, even. Not as dense as Dallas Willard but not quite as simple as the (great) John Mark Comer. Jon Tyson from NYC wrote a fabulous foreword predicting that this book about living an integrated life —Tyson says it is “not a quick fix but a way home” — will surely gather a good reputation. I loved his down-to-Earth line about getting bruises from “plumbing and pastoring.”  We don’t need more spiffy big screen televangelists, but I will listen to a pastor who is bruised. From plumbing, no less.

In a fast-paced and even fragmented world we need a “long obedience in the same direction” as we live out of our union with Christ and practice disciplines of formation in apprenticeship to the Lord Jesus. This book is going to be remembered as the debut of an author who will be respected for years to come.

All Things Together releases October 14, 2005; 260 pages.

The Myth of Good Christian Parenting: How False Promises Betrayed a Generation of Evangelical Families Marissa Franks Burt & Kelsey Kramer McGinnis (Brazos Press) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

RELEASE DATE October 14, 2025

I read this in one long, aggravated sitting, one long Sunday, and it was, as I expected, both common sense concerns about extremist parenting stuff that passes for “Christian” and an expose of the harm done by exceptionally strict and cult-like leaders like the Ezzos and Bill Gothard. These are names and teachings we never appreciated, and Burt & McGinnis are expert sociological critics offering sane Christian criticism of those fundamentalist dangers.

But the book does more than critique the far-out fringes of conservative Protestant parenting advice that was popular over the last four or five decades, the “QuiverFull” cult and those who wrote large, detailed manifestos about punishing sinful children. (Including some really weird statements by Doug Wilson.) No, it looks at the more mainstream sort of stuff sold in typical Christian bookstores — including ours! — largely on the coattails of Focus on the Family. Their insights about how evangelical entrepreneurialism and radio and TV firepower and the huge (now decimated) network of Christian bookstores created a real movement (making millions for many) of conservative, patriarchal, self-help, evangelical parenting.

The Myth of Good Christian Parenting documents tragic stuff in those circles and insists that even the less egregiously strict authors and teachings left a mark that wounded many. It is something we know a little something about.

The book is important as it is one slice of what some are calling the trend towards deconstruction (that is, giving up some or all of the teachings and attitudes of an evangelical past.) If you care about those who have been hurt by toxic sorts of faith — perhaps as children, perhaps as parents, perhaps as church leaders — this book is a must.

Their theological meditations and storytelling and exposé and historical study is all very persuasive. I must say — maybe I’ll write about it more, later — that some of it was convicting as I recall selling some of the books and authors they discuss who at the time seemed relatively benign.

I know we had and still do have diverse titles in our huge parenting and family section; we had Episcopalian contemplative approaches and books like Parenting for Peace and Justice and mainline Protestant studies alongside selected Focus products. I can remember vivid conversations with other young parents (we were parenting kids ourselves) as we walked through our family section, reminding customers to take every thing written or advised with a grain of salt, not to overdo any one “school of thought” and to temper it all with some standard-fare secular wisdom as well. We sold Veggie Tales and enjoyed Mr. Rogers. We pushed the mostly secular Read-Aloud Handbook alongside wise Christian resources like Honey for a Child’s Heart. Our side-by-side blend of titles from Reformed and secular and Methodist and progressive and Mennonite authors seems to have mitigated, or so I hope, some of the harshness that these authors more strict authors that were in many Christian bookstores or church libraries.

Apparently, as you can imagine, not all Christian booksellers promoted egalitarian authors and feminist critiques of harsh patriarchal vibes. Still, I found it troubling to think we sold and maybe continue to stock resources that could inspire parents to do harm to little ones. This book is important, and has got me thinking more about all this, and I commend it.

I especially commend it to any booksellers or Christian educators tasked with helping with the formation of wholesome Christian families. Their citation of dozens of popular evangelical titles and their comparison charts are exceptionally helpful to illustrate what authors and books tend to be more or less harmful or troubling.  This includes older best-sellers in this genre and other family-oriented ministries which many of us know by name. Agree or not, fully, with their keen assessments, there is no book on the market like this and anybody who uses resources of this sort simply has to have it in their toolkit so they can lead well in this arena.

Burt and McGinnis are good writers and they care deeply about human flourishing, as God intended, without toxic sorts of faith hurting families with shame and patriarchy. I think this is a significant book.

The Myth of Good Christian Parenting releases October 14th, 2025; 225 pages

Art Is: A Journey into the Light Makoto Fujimura (Yale University Press) $30.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00

RELEASE DATE October 21, 2025

I gave an early shout-out about this previously and we have a few pre-orders, but I know many of our favorite customers (and maybe some future favorite friends) will surely want to know about this. I can’t say much, yet, since I have not seen it, but Mako is a friend and a very, very esteemed writer. It is an honor to know him.

As you may know, he is a faithful, profoundly devout Christian with a big worldview that  leans into the goodness of creation, even as it is broken and vandalized. His hope for Christ’s generous redemption, pointed at even in the glories of beauty and the hints of divinity found in common grace, is palatable. He is a serious thinker, an excellent writer, a bold person of faith who is generous to all. And, he is a world-class, highly regarded abstract artist using a rather rare and ancient style of Japanese painting.

Mr. Fujimura has written a handful of excellent books that we have loved and anytime we set up books off site we almost always include a few of his. His reflections are mature and wise and we regularly recommend his Refractions or Culture Care or his fine chapter in the bigger collection It Was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God. In 2021, Yale University Press released what felt like a magnum opus, a major, serious work, Art and Faith: A Theology of Making. There was a forward by one of the great Biblical writers of our time, N. T. Wright. As important as that was, I have often wondered what in the world he would do next?

Art Is…is going to be nothing short of awesome, I am sure, and I’m told some of his art will be reproduced. It has been called “luminous” and another early reviewer, Christopher Rothko, calls it a “beautifully heartfelt text.”  It is said to be somewhat like an “intimate study tour” and shows us something of his process. Joyce Yu-Jean Lee of New York’s famous Pratt Institute says it “invites creative souls into Mako’s painting process–fusing the alchemy of light with his theology of making.”

Yale University Press writes:

When Makoto Fujimura painted as a child, he felt a mysterious electrical charge pass through him. Over decades of art making, writing, and reflecting in his studio, he has come to understand this charge as his Creator — a source he connects with most profoundly when making art. To be human is to be creative, Fujimura believes, and art making is a discipline of awareness, prayer, and praise by which we journey back to our original light.

Art Is… was listed by Publishes Weekly as one of the most significant titles of Fall 2025. We agree. It releases in hardcover October 21, 2025; 232 pages.

For the Love of Women: Uprooting and Healing Misogyny in America Dorothy Little Greco (Zondervan Reflective) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

RELEASE DATE October 28, 2025

Dorothy is a very fine writer – she has two excellent books about marriage (one about the beauty in marriage and the other a fabulous resource for middle-aged couples.) We respect her and are grateful for her good thinking and well-crafted prose.

This book is important, very important. From the debates about toxic masculinity (and some clearly is toxic) to the way women still get paid less than men, to the push back in recent years about women’s role in church and family, the complicated word misogyny carries an important message. Certain views about men being in charge hurts half the human race. And, I think Dorothy would say, hurts men as well.

We have learned (or most of us have) to think about the ways racist attitudes pervade our deepest assumptions and certainly how white supremacy has been encoded in certain systems in the land. From politics to the economy, family studies and urban affairs, racism is part of the informed conversation and most decent folks want to be anti-racist, personally and in terms of the architecture of society. Right?

And so, we must be anti-misogyny. Anti-sexism. Pro-justice for all of God’s children.

Dorothy Greco’s book is not a woke screed mimicking new wave feminists, although I’d be glad even if it was only that. But it is more: For the Love of Women is a theological and substantive bit of exploration, a study and expose, a call for us to realize and act against disdain for women that is more prevalent than we may realize.

As Greco points out in this lively book, “misogyny persists in American culture — often in ways subtler and more insidious than the outright sexism of the past. (Although, in recent months some so-called Christian leaders, more popular than they ought to be, have floated the idea that women shouldn’t be allowed to vote! Maybe it isn’t so subtle after all!)

As the back cover so properly says, “If we hope to disrupt and heal from misogyny, we must first be able to identify and understand it.” For the Love of Women has tons of research made understandable, lots of interviews (some rather painful, actually) and solid Biblical guidance. She shows how this anti-women tone corrupts six spheres of culture.

For the Love of Women looks at healthcare, the workplace, the government, media and entertainment, religious institutions and our intimate and family relationships. It’s important and particularly that she covers these domains — from the personal to the public, from church practices to government policy, from workplace habits to media trends. There is no other Christian book like it.

Can we turn this thing around, create relationships and cultures and structures that promote mutuality, care, and justice?

Violence against women is too prevalent and people (of both major political parties) in high places have been too often given a pass for their actions. This should light a fire for all of us to study and resolve to be agents of God’s ways in this central aspect of our lives together. I am glad for books like the must-read Safe Church: How to Guard Against Sexism and Abuse in Christian Communities by Dr. Andrew J. Bauman (Baker Books; $18.99) or Diane Langberg’s solid When the Church Harms God’s People: Becoming Faith Communities That Resist Abuse, Purse Truth, and Care for the Wounded (Brazos Press; $19.99) or the nearly seminal The #MeToo Reckoning: Facing the Church’s Complicity in Sexual Abuse and Misconduct by Ruth Everhart (IVP; $19.99.)

But we really need a broader, Christian assessment of misogyny in culture and society. Dorothy Littell Greco’s well-researched volume is a God-send. Read it and weep. And then read it again, and vow to take steps to become more intentionally vocal about expressing God’s good and gracious love for women.

For the Love of Women releases October 28, 2025 in paperback; 256 pages.

The Body Teaches the Soul: Ten Essential Habits to Form a Healthy and Holy Life Justine Whitmel Earley (Zondervan) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

RELEASE DATE October 28, 2025

I adore the fine, hip, honest writing style of the upbeat and practical lawyer, Justin Earley. We sold a lot of his first one and it remains one we show off everywhere — The Common Rule: Habits of Purpose for an Age of Distraction. (A gig shout-out goes to IVP for putting this handsome book into the world and getting this author known.) The family-oriented version of that came next, called Habits of the Household.There is now even a youth / teen edition of The Common Rule, with its cool graphics and references to research, Earley’s practical guidance or setting boundaries on screens and affirming things to do rather than getting lost in the digital sphere. Since his guidance on making your own Common Rule included fostering friendships and accountability partners and seeking community rather than solo, on-line stuff, it was natural that his next book, Made for People. Overlapping with concerns documented in books like The Anxious Generation Early focus on the loneliness epidemic and insisted that God made us for relationships. Friendship matters.

And yet, there is more. In this forthcoming one he will explore the embodied context of all of this. Our shift from an almost exclusively online, digital life to a lively, relational, principled one, will take not just rules and friends, but an attention on the body. He wants us to live wholistic, integrated, embodied spirituality.

I do not think that the soon to be released The Body Teaches… will be mostly a book about exercise or physical strength building, but, rather, it will explore the interface of our bodily reality and the breath /spirit that makes us alive. Following several recent titles about creaturely embodiment and the value of our bodies (think, just for instance of Embracing the Body: Finding God in Our Flesh and Bones by Tara Owens or Faith Embodied: Glorifying God with out Physical and Spiritual health by Stephen Ko) this soon-to-be-released one is going to be an amazing, vital contribution. Especially with some recent research about everything from insomnia to anxiety, which he himself experienced. And I’m betting on a really handsome look, too, making it really interesting.

I’m looking forward to it.

Listen well to our friend and one of the most wise and eloquent writers today, Dr. Curt Thompson (author of, among others, The Soul of Desire and The Deepest Place.) Curt says:

We need to be regularly, repetitively reminded of what is good and beautiful in the world, not least of how we are to live. And with The Body Teaches the Soul, Justin Whitmel Earley reminds us what the ancient biblical writers informed us of so long ago: that our bodies together with our breath make us human, and we ignore or idolize the body to our peril. I invite you to read this book with hope and confidence that the God who made us, bodies and souls, is in the business of honoring and redeeming all of who we are for joy and glory.

The Body Teaches the Soul releases October 28, 2025. It is paperback; 272 pages.

Insane for the Light: A Spirituality for Our Wisdom Years Ronald Rolheiser (Image) $27.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $21.60

RELEASE DATE October 28, 2025

I hope you know Ronald Rolheiser, a Catholic priest (Oblates of Mary Immaculate), former college president, and spiritual writer who has given us some of the finest ruminations on the inner life that I have read in recent decades. He is to be found alongside those who appreciate Richard Foster and Ruth Haley Barton, Basil Pennington and Richard Rohr, Henri Nouwen and Howard Thurman, Martin Laird and Evelyn Underhill. You get the drift; this guy is up there.

Many loved his Shattered Lantern: Rediscovering a Felt Presence of God. I think his most notable work is The Holy Longing: The Search for Christian Spirituality and many really liked his Sacred Fire: A Vision for a Deeper Human and Christian Maturity. This, however, is more specific, applying his holistic and humane Catholic spirituality to those who are approaching their elder years. In a way it seems to be the final part of a trilogy, starting with Holy Longing and Sacred Fire.

The title, by the way, comes from a line from a poem by Goethe (and, not surprisingly, translated from the German by Robert Bly.) The poem is called “The Holy Longing” and the line about the light is what Rolheiser applies to those maturing into wise ones, older sages. I think this is more theologically meaty than Rohr’s popular Falling Upward and more deeply Christian than Parker Palmer’s altogether lovely On the Brink of Everything: Grace, Gravity, and Getting Old, both of which I’ve enjoyed and heartily recommend. I haven’t gotten very far into it yet, but I see it coming: Rolheiser moves us through some stages of our evolving spirituality and then uses Saint John of the Cross (and some Henri Nouwen) to reflect on “giving away” our own deaths. Hmm.

Father Rolheiser has not written a major book in a while. He has done exquiste small ones, almost booklets, on sexual chastity, on coping with suicide, on praying at home, and more. This forthcoming one is a long-awaited collection of major chapters — with fabulous citations and great footnotes! — and for those of us in our “wisdom years” I think we really need it. Thanks be to God.

Insane for the Light comes out October 28, 2025; 224 pages.

Don’t Let Nobody Turn You Around: How the Black Church’s Public Witness Leads Us Out of the Culture War Justin Giboney (IVP) $25.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $20.79

RELEASE DATE November 4, 2025 Just arrived!

I know we’ll get this early and I’m thrilled to soon read it. The historic Black church has been a fascinating topic for me and those who study the Civil Rights movement know how the church served as an empowered space for activists. Not all Black congregations have the same public theology or social ethos, of course, and this has been an area of some scholarly study — The Divided Mind of the Black Church: Theology, Piety, and Public Witness by Ralph Warnock is an important work. I wonder if Giboney will cite it?

Another book that ought to be in conversation with this forthcoming must-read is Making It Plain: Why We Need Anabaptism and the Black Church by central Pennsylvania activist and professor, Dr. Drew Hart. In that great paperback, Hart invites us to receive the witness of the Anabaptist tradition, realizing that the two marginalized voices in Christianity — the black church and the Anabaptists — have major contributions to make. Again, I wonder if Giboney will cite it?

Justin Giboney’s big project, then, is immensely important and I am sure this book is going to become a go-to, vital vision for those seeking a way out of the conventional left vs right culture wars. As important as the two books I just mentioned may be, I am quite sure that this is going to be extraordinarily vital. Drawing on the rich spiritual insights of this particular minority faith community might be one of the most instructive practices for many of us, and most of us have a lot of learning to do to get up to speed. Giboney has already given us great words and insight in his co-authored book with Michael Wear called Compassion [&] Conviction (about the “and” campaign.) Rejecting the false dichotomies between word and deed, between evangelism and social engagement, between conservatives and liberals is a great start to thinking about how to engage the cultural ethos and point to a better way. The tag line on the back of this well-researched work will be “choose witness over war.”

Esau McCaulley wrote the forword to Don’t Let Nobody Turn You Around and Tish Harrison Warren has an endorsement saying it is “required reading.” Sportscaster (and founder of the K.I.N.G. movement) Chris Broussard calls it “A masterpiece — a Christian, historical, political masterpiece.”

Don’t Let Nobody Turn You Around officially releases in November but it just arrived and we are permitted to sell it early. It’s  212 pages in hardcover. Hooray.

Liturgies for Resisting Empire: Seeking Community, Belonging, and Peace in a Dehumanizing World Kat Armas (Brazos Press) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

RELEASE DATE November 4, 2025

We have enjoyed having the two previous books by Kat Armas, a Cuban-American writer of great depth. Her fantastic book on marginalized women in the Bible and in her own life, Abuelita Faith: What Women on the Margins Teach Us about Wisdom, Persistence, and Strength remains a staple here. Next she did a 40-day devotional, a collection of provocative readings called Sacred Belonging: A 40-Day Devotional on the Liberating Heart of Scripture. Those paying attention to young-ish rising authors with excellent insights and good writing chops will keep an eye on her. Rave endorsements support her work, with blurbs from Randy Woodley and Karen Gonzalez and Marlena Graves and Emily Freeman. Danté Stewart talks about how her words “dance and sing” made him rethink “what it means to dance and sing and write as a theologian.”  Along with them, I can’t wait to see Liturgies for Resisting Empire. I suspect we’ll have it early, too.

I do not know what the actual format of this will be. I have a hunch it will be more than poetic prayers, maybe some reflections or ruminations. (These days different people have different uses of the word “liturgies.”) I do know that there is a call-and-response sort of cadence, with chapters like this:

• A Liturgy for Resisting Empire
• 1. Rejecting Empire, Embracing Joy
• 2. Rejecting Lies, Embracing Reality
• 3. Rejecting Ideology, Embracing Wisdom
• 4. Rejecting Hierarchy, Embracing Kinship
• 5. Rejecting Dualism, Embracing Paradox
• 6. Rejecting Hustle, Embracing Rest
• 7. Rejecting Sameness, Embracing Wholeness
• 8. Rejecting Dominance, Embracing Connection
• 9. Resisting Violence, Embracing Peace
• A Benediction of Belonging

A Liturgy for Rejecting Empire releases November 4, 2025; 225 pages

A Beautiful Year: 52 Meditations on Faith, Wisdom, and Perseverance Diana Butler Bass (St. Martin’s Essentials) $28.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $22.40

RELEASE DATE November 4, 2025

I’ve arranged these books to pre-order by release date but I’m happy to say, with no disrespect to the other awesome authors named above, that we’ve saved the best for last. Okay, that’s a little schmaltzy, but Beth and I love Diana. We have known her casually for decades and have worked with her husband perhaps just as long when he was in the publishing industry. I have read all her books. We have celebrated and tried to sell these great titles — even if I might say things a bit differently from time to time (imagine that!) We have commended them to folks across the church spectrum and from various theological traditions.

Diana’s last book, Freeing Jesus, was a memoir of sorts, reflecting on how she came to understand the person of Jesus and his and work and teaching at various stages in her life. Like a beautiful unfolding drama or a complex mosaic, she tells personal stories and offers both Biblical and theological insight at various places in or stages of her ever-growing relationship with Jesus (and His church.) As a devout believer, as an ecumenical church person, as a professional historian, as one who has studied the sociology of churches, and, as one (living near DC) who has been particularly attentive to the dangers of recent shifts in the American political and religious landscape, she is an ideal writer to reflect on all of this. Have her own changes and shifts and growth in faith and understanding mirrored those that others have felt? Certainly, yes. I loved Freeing Jesus and found myself in its wondrous pages time and again.

Anyway, Diana has used her training as an historian and scholar of American religious experience to guide her into doing several important books of congregational life, offering hope for churches in a changing religious context. We’ve reviewed her books here and celebrated them all. I especially loved her one called Grounded: Finding God in the World (which she calls “a spiritual revolution”) and her wonderful work, surprisingly captivating for me, called Gratitude: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks. We follow her online writing and commend it to you, even as she explores the dangers of the resurgence these days of white supremacy and idolatrous Christian nationalism.

And yet, here’s the thing: she has studied under and been friends with some of the finest mainline denominational leaders of our era and she is a heck of a preacher. She is well-rooted in her ecumenical understanding, including her previous seasons in evangelicalism, Reformed and otherwise. Now she is a fairly standard, if exceptionally thoughtful, Epsiopalian, with a generous and wide network. She knows everybody from Rowan Williams to Mariann Edgar Budde, from Brian McLaren to Canon Kelly Brown Douglas to the non-Episcopalian, Anne Lamott. One of my favorite photos of dear Diana showed her in her middle-class business suit (with pearls!) next to her pal, the sleeveless, tatted up Nadia Bolz-Weber.

Which leads me just to say this: A Beautiful Year is a great way to encounter her charm and brilliance. She starts with some rumination on our view of time, the flow of the seasons. Christians, of course, have historically arranged their lives to be somewhat shaped by the story of the gospel expressed in the liturgical calendar. You know we’ve featured many books on this (and hosted our friend Paul Metzger once on a webinar inspired by his good collection of meditations around the church year.) Here, Diana is doing something similar, inviting us to think through the big themes of the church year as a way to get our bearings in these disorienting, dangerous times. Yep, this forthcoming volume offers 52 weekly, Biblical essays, thoughtful devotionals, if you will. The very meaning of the title as I’ve pondered it — a beautiful year — has left me gobsmacked.

I do not for a minute think Diana is backing away from her prophetic call to resist the powers that be, to speak out against the madness of indiscriminate ICE detentions and troops illegally dispatched to cities, of gross wars against civilian populations in Gaza and a President who dabbles in QAnon chaos. But as those who follow her lectionary sermons online well know, she wants to be grounded in a story that is not merely a reaction to our times. She wants to be rooted in a classic understanding of the Good News of the restoring reign of God, springing to new creation life in our midst. She wants to share Bible truths, rich and generative and creative and lovely, not to pummel those who do not see what she sees or insist that her interpretation is the only way, but to invite us all into a year-long conversation. What does faith mean in these times, knowing what we know? What does it mean to be rooted in ancient wisdom? How do we carry on when religionists cite violence against those not like them?

I think her call to perseverance through beauty is really something. The title is lovely, the cover has flowers on it. There are a few pencil drawings of fruit and seashells and pumpkins and such, a nice, homespun touch. She may be an academic but her father was a florist and she has this decorative touch. And that’s an indication that she’s a darn good storyteller, too. She relates her own often tender stories to the epic stories of the Bible, creatively considered, sometimes with daring interpretation. You are going to cherish this book. Pre-order a few today.

A Beautiful Year releases November 4, 2025; 336 pages.

+++

BookNotes

SPECIAL
DISCOUNT

20% OFF