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In the last week of patriotic celebration I’ve been inspired by some books and essays and serious Facebook posts about America’s founding, about the 250th and the characteristics of a uniquely Christian approach to our national holiday. Skip the far right hoopla and the overly critical secular left. Look for balanced, wise, thoughtful stuff; there is so much good insight about our times.

I’ve also been outraged by the sheer stupidity of things that are said — one so-called “Christian worldview” site linked to one of the dumbest articles I’ve ever read on this topic from what is supposed to be a heavyweight conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation. Hillsdale College put out a piece that was nothing short of idolatrous, quoting a worldly Founder saying that our Declaration was our own Ark of the Covenant. Can you imagine conflating even righteous cultural stuff with God’s own self-revelation in Holy Scripture? His holy presence? Where are the meticulous fundamentalists when you need ‘em? Crass civil religion has deep roots and we must avoid it. For all the vigilance some of these conservative Christian demand of liberal theology they’ve got blind spots so big you could drive a truck through.

Some customers and friends thought it a bit imbalanced but I do hope you saw my large BookNotes reviews of books a month ago about the dangers of political extremism.

Some of the upshot, then: we saw flag-waving, masked neo-Nazis actually showing up in DC (while Trump’s people mostly look the other way and continue to fret about left-wing misdeeds.) We sigh and still celebrate, rejoicing in the good and resisting the evil and praying for discernment through it all. Which is why we’re glad for customers who read BookNotes, wanting to be life-long learners, reading deeply about things that matter.

THINGS THAT MATTER

One of the things that matters — if you can stand the segue — is learning to relax, to play, to enjoy life, to, as Ray Ortlund’s brand new little book title puts it Eat, Drink & Be Merry: A Gospel Call to Bold Enjoyment (Crossway; $16.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59.) For many of us, summertime is a season we are able to experience creaturely joys, fun, and relaxation. And this little book makes a conservative Biblical case for just that. It’s very nice.

I bet you can see where this is going in this new BookNotes. Here are a few recommended books on recreation and a fantastic new one on hobbies of various sorts (it’s brilliant) and a whole batch of quick suggestions for entertaining fiction reading. Hooray!

ALL BOOKS MENTIONED ARE SALE PRICED – 20% OFF.  Enjoy. 

The National Parks Inspiration Guide: Your Journey to Connection, Meaning and Discovery Bruce Barkhauer & Brad Lyons (Chalice Press) $21.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59

Since it is a time of celebration of and for our beautiful land this seems a perfect one to recommend first. This is the third in a series of devotional-like titles about the national parks. A great idea, eh?

This one, The National Parks Inspiration Guide is compact-sized with full color photos and a couple of great points about each park. I love that they resist “travel as consumption” but invite us to something akin to mindfulness — evoking reference and belonging.  The name things to notice.  In fact, these authors hint at things some others might miss, invite participants to slow down and be in the moment. They name a value or virtue for each place.

I’ve only been to a few of these grand places but I really enjoy reading about them. This is a substantially revised and expanded edition of their 2018 America’s Holy Ground. Whether you enjoy traveling or are an armchair one, this little book is an inspired delight.

Created to Play: How Taking Hobbies Seriously Grows Us Spirituality Brianna Lambert (IVP) $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

Leave it to the always thoughtful IVP to come up with a book like this. It offers a wholesome, gospel-centered theology of the goodness of creation and our human need and capacity for enjoyment, finding delight in ordinary stuff. If we are to serve God in all we do, certainly nothing is frivolous or insignificant. Or maybe I mean to say things that are frivolous are still significant Ha.

So, for starters, this new book grounds our ordinary lives and typical stuff most of us do — gardening, collecting photographs, cooking, watching TV, playing sports (or rooting for teams), dabbling in the arts, fixing up old cars, scrapbooking, exercising, reading — in a solid Christian perspective, pushing us towards a spirituality of the ordinary and a basic theology of play.

But here are three thing that make this approach of Created to Play nearly genius. First, she groups various hobbies (and man, she thinks of a lot of them) under various categories — she has ten chapters on those whose hobbies make them what she calls Beholders, Restorers, Connectors, Nourishers, Makers, Curators, Keepers, Movers, Historians, and Heralds. This helps you understand the value of what our hobbies say about us and how we can appreciate them more. It’s fun seeing where she puts pet lovers or aquarium owners and beekeepers and how she aligns storytellers, joke tellers and social media folks, and how she groups, say, board gamers and crossword puzzlers along with sports fans and RC (electric race care) hobbyists. Whether you’re a rock climber or thrifter, soap maker, film buff or birdwatcher, you will get a kick out of how she names your particular joy and passion.

Second and thirdly, I don’t know if she is inspired by Ignatian spirituality (or maybe Enneagram studies) but she offers a good thing, a virtue, if you will, about each group.  And, she links each, then, with a potential vice — a dark side, if you will, how an obsession or disordered love for your hobby can be harmful. These possible downsides are very thoughtful, I think, and while the book has a playful and winsome style, it shows how God is present and active in shaping us through our interests and passions and how it can lead us inward in unhealthy ways. I dare say that there has never been book done quite like this. Kudos.

The Quiet Resistance: An Invitation to Slow Down and Find a Richer Life Andrea G. Burke (Baker) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

There are dozens of books about slowing down, living unhurried, finding rest. I can name ten great ones, so I skipped this when it first was announced, thinking it was just another bit of nice but typical self-help fare. And then I realized this woman wrote a book we got in from the UK, A Bit of Earth which was a fantastic and sophisticated thinking about a spirituality of gardening. If she wrote this, I needed to see it.

The Quiet Resistance is wonderfully written, and, so far (I’m taking it slowly) a delightful study of many ways we can quietly resist the culture’s temptations (expectations) that we “move faster, work harder, digitize, monetize, and turn our lives into 15-second clips to get clicks, likes, and shares.” Of course, in the meantime we are missing so much, stuff that matters, the patterns and rhythms and textures of a real life. For instance, she discusses “the camaraderie of knowing our neighbors. The fellowship of eating a simple home-cooked meal with our families. God’s goodness and truth, she says,”wait patiently for us to turn off the noise and begin to pay attention.”

I list this book here in books about summer living and delight in less structured time even though it sounds like a scolding or a stressful addition of yet more stuff to do. (Play! Wonder! Resist speed!) Yes, she invites us to these things, but it’s a blast, really, a challenge filled with joy. She promises.

Here are some of the things she writes about, written as happy suggestions — take care of an animal, get your head in the clouds, study history, go to sleep, plant more gardens, eat real food, get around some children, listen to music. Sure, she has a chapter on slowing down and invites us to both “go outside and see the world” and “stay home and be quiet.” She has a section on becoming involved in your local church and tells us to “spend time with real people.” She also reminds us to read, read, read. You’ll also love the chapter “Fill Your Life with Good Stories”

Catching Hope: The Hidden Spiritual Wisdom of Fishing Pete Nunnally (Broadleaf) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

I keep waiting for just the right book that explores the deep connection between faith and fishing and the rejuvenation that many who take up the sport feel about it. We have featured books that offer a spirituality of baseball (or playing catch like that splendid read by my friend Ethan Bryan, Playing Catch) and other sports, and have named others about fishing but there is something about fishing, especially fly fishing that makes is natural for spiritual reflection. I have no patience for it, maybe, but many of my favorite pastors and spiritual writers are, it ends up, in love with casting. And this, Catching Hope, may be the best book yet about “the hidden wisdom” of fishing. It is not primarily about fly fishing, either, by the way, as this Episopal priest lives near DC and has fished in lakes and ocean piers and off of deep sea boats. There are very striking pen and ink drawings, too, making this a lovely little read.

My friends Brian McLaren (who is famously an avid fly fishermen) and Derrick Weston both have fabulous blurbs. But catch the beauty of this one from Debra Rienstra (English prof and author of Refugia Faith) who is not a fishing aficionado herself:

No need to be a fishing enthusiast to find this little gem utterly compelling. In vivid prose, and with vulnerable wisdom, Father Pete Nunnally tells his story of coming alive–to waters and winds and fishy creatures with their wily ways, but even more, to God. Currents of memoir and hard-won spiritual insight flow deftly through these chapters, offering spiritual seekers and yearners plenty to celebrate and ponder. — Debra Rienstra, author of Refugia Faith: Seeking Hidden Shelters, Ordinary Wonders, and the Healing of the Earth

Brooding Upon the Waters: A Memoir of Farming, Fishing, and Failure in America’s Lost Landscape Howard Schaap (Slant Books) $22.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $17.60

I’ve written about this before, saying what a wondrously written memoir it is, how it brings together a sense of place and dysfunctional families and the love of fishing, even as the author. Schaap is a professor of English at Dordt in Iowa (and no relation to his predecessor, the great writer James Schaap.) The Midwest history and stories about the outdoor (and literature) make this a natural for me — I think some of our BookNotes readers will love it. That he is what one reviewer called “searingly honest” about mental health issues and the looming implications of the farm crisis of the 1980s and 90s for a Dutch immigrant family makes this a riveting study, but I name it here because at its center, besides maybe the tall grass prairie landscape prose, is this matter of “brooding upon the waters.” It is a story about the healing power of fishing. There are boats and rods and loons and lakes and walleyes.

If you summers ever including something like fishing in “The Land of 1000 Lakes” you will appreciate Schaap’s writing about it. If you care about small town folks —including those who take ”hard-luck fishing trips to the mud lakes of the tall grass prairie” (which “mirrored his father’s dark moods and darkening theology”) you will love this moving, brooding memoir.

Noticing: Intimate Encounters with the Natural World Richard Louv (Algonquin Books) $30.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00

Louv should be given a Noble Prize or something: his scholarly and yet attractive advocacy for raising kids with some outdoor experience has been hugely significant  (He has, in fact, won the prestigious Audubon Medal, alongside the likes of Rachel Carson and Sir David Attenborough.) His Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorders remains a great paperback classic.

His “new nature movement” is growing and there are others, including people of faith, who have chimed in. This new Noticing volume is said to be his most personal yet. He explores eco-anxiety and the upheaval of our times, searching deeply for his own connection to the natural world. The prose is “quietly beautiful and contemplative.” He lives amidst the California wilderness so the writing includes his own wonderful observations there.

It isn’t just nature writing, though, but, as Linda Akeson McGurk put it, “It’s an invitation to meet the more-than-human world through the senses… A beautiful ode to wonder — and a reminder that our capacity for enchantment is a skill we can relearn.”

Richard Louv would like you to live a beautiful life. He wants you to see how easy, how free, and freeing, this can be. This book is a how-to Manuel for getting back your soul.— Carl Safina, Alfie & Me: What Owls Know, What Humans Believe

Watch and Wonder: Birding as a Spiritual Practice Ragan Sutterfield (Broadleaf Books) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

We’ve told you about Sutterfield’s books before, his amazing book about geography and place (Cultivating Reality: How the Soil Might Save Us), a great introductory book about Wendell Berry, his little Episcopalian resource on creation care. Last year we named The Art of Being a Creature: Meditations on Humus and Humility as one of our favorite books of 2025.

And here, in his most delightful project yet, he turns his writerly attention to another of God’s creatures: birds. Yep — we love it.

We’ve got several other vital memoirs and Christian books about birding. Most recently, see Kevin Burrell’s Considering Sparrows: What Birds Teach Us About Who We Are, Were We’re Going, and the Joy of Following Jesus (Waterbrook; $22.00 //OUR SALE PRICE = $17.60.) Burrell’s is clear-headed and well written, with a forward by the thoughtful, Reformed thinker, Joni Eareckson Tada. It’s good, but a tad didactic; he uses the science of birds to make analogies and teaching points, so he says, his book is “more than birdwatching.”

But Ragan Sutterfield’s Watch and Wonder has a different feel,  not only more allusive and playful and intriguing, but he sees his hobby of birdwatching as a spiritual practice. We’ve long admired Sutterfield’s profound thinking and sense of seeing. This book may be his best, yet, Watch and Wonder.

Listen to how writer and editor Beatty describes Watch and Wonder:

For anyone who has been curious about birdwatching, Ragan Sutterfield’s lyrical love letter to this pastime is a wonderful place to start. Beyond the inherent joy of seeing a flash of brilliant color at the bird-feeder or hearing the mournful hoot of an owl on a forest walk, the birds provide us with a way of paying attention to, and thus loving, the created world. May Watch and Wonder restore our amazement at the variety, beauty, and interdependence of creation–and our commitment to care for it as our home. — Katelyn Beaty, author, editor, and lifelong birdwatcher

I always like blurbs by Jamie Smith, who says of it:

I feel like I have glimpsed something of God in the azure flash of a tiny indigo bunting and the sublime grandeur of a bald eagle’s gaze. In this wise and inviting book, Sutterfield helps us understand the wondrous intersection of Creator and creation in these beings who defy gravity. Read this book to learn how to listen and look for feathered companions who teach us to lift up our hearts. — James K. A. Smith, Calvin University, author of How to Inhabit Time and Make Your Home in This Luminous Dark

Is a River Alive? Robert Macfarlane (Norton) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

I want to keep this column brief, but I will say that for those who know Macfarlane (perhaps for his popular, eloquent nonfiction Underland) you know his beautiful prose. John Vailliant (who wrote the stunning Fire Weather) calls him a “once-in-a-generation virtuoso.”

Vaillant continues,

…and I don’t know when his kaleidoscopic language and world-expanding scholarship have been used to more potent effect than in this impassioned, resounding affirmation to the title’s urgent question.

“Read it for pleasure,” says Rebecca Solnit, “read it for illumination, read it for confirmation that our world is changing in wonderful as well as terrible ways.”

I wanted to list something that, while fully nonfiction, has the feel of an escape, becoming enthralled, captivated. Last. year it was the perhaps lighter but weighty in glory, The Place of Tides by James Rebanks.

Is a River Alive? is intellectually serious, gloriously written, with sophisticated prose, and is extraordinary, tender and radical, learned and lovely. It is wide-ranging and the breath-taking prose of the prologue and the frightening reporting about draught in the introduction make the first 30 pages worth the price of admission.

The next three major parts explore three watersheds (or, as he puts it, the book “unfolds across three main landscapes. First, an Ecuadorian cloud-forest named Los Cedros, the ‘Forest of the Cedars’, home to the headwaters of the Río Los Cedros, the ‘River of the Cedars.’ Second, the wounded creeks, lagoons and estuaries of the watery city of Chennai in south-east India. And third, the wild interior of Nitassinan, homeland of the Innu people, through which runs the Mutehekau Shipu, also known as The Magpie River, who makes sea-fall at the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, six hundred miles north-east of Montreal.”

Did you notice, he uses the word “who” for the Magpie?

We all share a recognition that we live in a polyphonic world, he claims.The waters are not yet silent, even thought they are hurting. Macfarlane’s humane and remarkable voice has been called beautiful, astonishing, breath-taking, and more.

This is one of the most amazing book blurbs I’ve seen in ages:

Is a River Alive? is one of the best books I’ve read in a very long time — exciting, brilliantly comprehensive, mind-altering. Any soul going dormant, any citizen going numb, will be revivified and propelled back to their essential cord, where rage, wonder, and imagination intertwine, a powerful hope for the earth arises. A spellbinding, life-changing work. — Jorie Graham, author, To 2040

NOVELS

Three quick comments.

1. These are not necessarily my favorite novels ever, just some recent ones that seemed worthy of a shout-out. Adventure awaits. Beware.
2. We have plenty of books about literature and the Christian benefit of reading widely. At the very least, read the great chapter on fiction in the great World of Wonders: A Spirituality of Reading by Jeff Crosby (Paraclete Press; $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19) a book we hope you have and am sure you’ll love. I hope you recall our describing the handful of great studies of fabulous contemporary novels in All Swirling and Weaving: Reading Fiction and Growing in Faith by Rev. Doug Basler (Wipf & Stock; $19.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.20.) It’s insightful and enjoyable! More deeply, consider the hefty and brilliant The Divided Soul: Duty and Desire in Literature and Life by Heidi White (Goldberry Press; $29.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.20.) And while I’m on a roll, here, if you are a parent or grandparent, know that we just got a seriously wise book called Stories Woven in Silver: Pointing Kids to the Gospel Through Children’s Literature by Kathryn Butler & Korrie Johnson (Crossway; $21.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59.)
3.  If you are interested, know that I put together (for a clergy workshop I was doing a few years ago) a list of 50 novels that we loved; I ought to update it, but I give a one-sentence description of each. (There’s also a list of 50 memoirs.) Check it out here.

ALL 20 NOVELS MENTIONED HERE ARE ON SALE for 20% OFF. Order by using the secure order tab below.  We thank you for your support.

The All-American: A Novel Susie Finkbeiner (Revell) $19.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.20

I know the world has happily gone soccer crazy this month but, come on, baseball is still a national past-time, right? And who doesn’t love a 1950s-era women’s baseball story. If you loved A League of Their Own (and who doesn’t, seriously?) Finkbeiner here offers a great Christian novel about women’s baseball. Set in 1952 during the era of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, it, simply put, “follows a teenage girl who escapes a family scandal in Detroit to pursue her dream of playing professional baseball.”

Here’s another bit of the plot — Bertha and Flossie (don’t you love those names!) are shocked when their dad is accused of being a member of the Community Party by House Un-American Activities Committee. They move to a suburb of Detroit where Bertha acts on her girlhood dreams of playing baseball with the Workington Sweet Peas.

Susie Finkbeiner, who lives in Western Michigan, is known in the evangelical publishing world, having written poignant novels like Stories That Bind Us, The Nature of Small Birds, and more.

Theo of Golden: A Novel Alan Levi (Atria) $20.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $17.60

I know we’ve promoted this several times — back when it was a virtually unknown indie press title and then when it was reissued by Simon & Schuster, becoming quickly last year a million-seller. I name it again because it is really, really wonderful — nearly everybody loves it! — and is such a popular title that you really ought to know about it. It’s a lovely, slow story, meaningful, tender, and nicely done.

Golden is a fictional town in Georgia and Theo, there, buys up pen and ink portaits and tries to deliver them to the respective people. Talk about heartwarming and thrilling! It’s a beautiful tale, full of character (and characters.)

The Prodigal of Leningrad: A Novel Daneil Taylor (Raven) $21.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59

Taylor taught literature and writing for almost 50 years, often within Christian higher education, and he is known as a deep, generous thinker, a fine philosopher, and a great storyteller.  And he writes mystery novels; I think this is his fourth.

The Prodigal of Leningrad is about the harrowing siege of Leningrad. As it says on the back cover, “While the bombs fall and starvation grips the city, Daniil Aslant continues to lead tours of the Hermitage Museum show empty frames and describe the paints they once held. Although the museum’s masterpieces have been hidden away for safekeeping, their presence lingers in memory and meaning.

Is that not intriguing? Daniil’s grandfather is an Orthodox priest who was exiled to the Gulag and as Daniil’s ponders his grandfathers willingness to embrace suffering as a sacred calling (and as his city is under attack) he ponders anew Rembrandt’s waiting The Return of the Prodigal Son. We are told this amazing read is based on actually historical events. Whether you enjoy art or literature or history (or family and faith) this historical novel will be unforgettable.

The Correspondent Virginia Evans (Crown) $28.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $22.40

Beth and I both agree this is one of the most memorable novels we’ve read in ages. As you may have heard (I highlighted it before) the story unfolds as a series of letters, to and from a retired law clerk. The great Ann Patchett says it is “subtly told and finely made.” Florence Knapp of The Names said “I cried more than once as I witnessed this brilliant woman come to understand herself more deeply and risk lowering her defenses. Both serious and uplifting.”

It is about an aging woman and we loved that, but is really is a triumph regardless of the setting or epistolary genre. Very highly recommended.

Whistler: A Novel Ann Patchett (Harper) $30.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00

Fans and critics alike may argue about what is Ann Patchett’s best novel. Some may say Bel Canto (Beth would not, by the way) and The Dutch House was on a short list for a Pulitzer Prize. Tom Lake, set in Northern Michigan, was a delight. Taft was my first, I think, and Beth liked The Patron Saint of Liars years ago. (I, by the way, am an earnest evangelist for her nonfiction collections, which I love, love, love. Get the collections These Precious Days and This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage and you can thank me later.)

Beth finished the very new Whistler quickly and said it was very, very satisfying. Publishers Weekly called it “another perfectly executed and quietly profound family drama” and they say it is one of her best. So there.

Some of the story happens while the main character, Daphne Fuller, bumps into a long-lost step father while in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There is flashback to her girlhood in Missouri, a car wreck, and the story of the horse, Whistler.

James: A Novel Percival Everett (Doubleday) $28.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $22.40

Speaking of Pulitzers — James, indeed, did win a year ago and was also a winner of the coveted National Book Award. And Beth says it was stunning, breathtakingly good. She was charged up about it in a way she doesn’t often get about books she likes. I suppose you know it is essentially a wise and entertaining (and surprising) story of Huck Finn from the point of view of the African American, Jim. Brilliant, eh? The prolific Percival Everett deserves every award available.

(Speaking of how brilliantly clever he is, did you know his 2020 novel Telephone has three editions, with three different endings — like the game of telephone, you know? There is a very small difference in the cover art that most people don’t even know about and when a customer asked me about it I suggested she was out of her mind; nobody could do three different books with the same ISBN. Ha. She was right and we now have all three. Just saying.)

The Nature of Disappearing Kimi Cunningham Grant (Minotaur Books) $28.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $22.40

I’m not much for thrillers but for those who like this sort, this one has been called a “mesmerizing mystery” and “nail-bitingly tense.” Yet, there is humanity, and goodness, and what Amy Jo Burns (author of Shiner and Mercury) Calles “electric and wise” (and “the most inspired thriller on my bookshelf.” Wow.  It is beautifully-written, I can tell you that, and when I first opened it up in the middle I came across spectacular prose about the striking Idaho landscape. Wow.

We usually tell you about new books by Ms Cunningham, a central Pennsylvania writer and a friend of a friend. She has studied at Oxford, has a graduate degree from the excellent program at Bucknell, and did her undergrad work near us at Messiah University.

By the way, years ago I read her memoir Silver Like Dust: One Family’s Story of America’s Japanese Internment, about being Japanese American in rural central Pennsylvania, yet being haunted by stories of her grandmothers internment after Pearl Harbor.  Anyway The Nature of Disappearing is her latest and some who like these sorts of literary but blistering reads will be sure to love it.

Through artful prose and dual-time storytelling, Grant reminds us that, sometimes, we have to get lost to find ourselves. — Hannah Morrissey, author of When I’m Dead

Wild Dark Shore: A Novel: Charlotte McConaghy (Flatiron Books) $28.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.19

At the very end of last year I was honored to be on a podcast with two other book loves (at Culture Shift) and both of my other conversation partners raved about this thriller of a book, both of them naming it in their top few reads of last year. It had just come out, then, and it had tons of buzz. I had heard about it, but we never even got it into the store. I promised them both I’d read it, and it is on my summer reading list. I can’t say much, yet, but it offers dazzling prose, a careful story, called “spellbinding” and gripping. It seems to combine the very best of literary fiction with a page-turning edge, a mystery, an ode to the beauty of the world, and, okay, I’ll admit it, a book about the fraught future regarding climate change. It’s set on an island, asking what happens when we risk losing our homes (and neighbors)?

I do not think Wild Dark Shore is merely a wilderness survival story, and it isn’t apocalyptic, really, taut as it may be. The characters are said to be fun, and, as everybody says, the writing is gorgeous. It was a Reese’s Book Club selection. The best selling author, Charlotte McConaghy, is from Australia.

The Inklings Detective Agency John R Kelly (Waterbrook) $18.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

Of course the mark of a fiction writer is, uh, fiction. Making stuff up. Imaginativity, as they say. Well, the creative impulses are on display here — can you imagine? The literary legends known as the Inklings are called upon to help catch a killer. As the back cover puts it, they trade their pens to magnifying glasses.  Ha.

Yep, Lewis and Tolkien and the others realize time is running out in the shadowy streets of 1936 Oxford. And they could be next!

John Kelly, we are told, has studied history and spirituality for most of his life (and he has taught church history, world religions and more.) They say this is “packed with historical details, intrigue” this thrilling whodunit is, they say, “a masterful blend of high-stakes drama.” I’m not sure what it is a blend of but it looks fun.

Which reminds me — we still stock the nearly magical thriller  Looking for the King: An Inklings Novel by David Downing (who I mentioned in the last BookNotes, telling of his editing the letters collection of Lewis called Living the Faith. His Paraclete novel is a blast. Why not buy both mysteries and lose yourself in Oxford?

Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt Ben Reeves (Avid Readers Press) $28.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $22.40

This just arrived a day ago and it truly has been, as most media outlets have said, one of the most anticpated novels of the season. It is from the point of view of the character Death. Authors I admire raved — Graeme Samson of The Rosie Project said it is “original, riveting, and moving.”  Another said “this is one of the most affecting, original, and unforgettable novels I have ever read. Matthew Quick (of The Silver Linings Playbook and recent memoir, Dad, Love Me) says it is “heartening switch the steady poetry of everyday life. This clever and vivid book make me fall involve with our collective ephemerality. The ending left me speechless.”

This explains it well: “Through the lens of death himself, we confront the highs and lows of the human experience in a way that reminds us how gritty and exquisite it is to live. Ben Reeves has expertly crafted a mortality tale that is both abstract and specific, spiritual and physical, fantastical and as true as it gets. The characters are so vivid that they seem to be sitting beside you, their loves and losses your own. Absolutely breathtaking, with a perfect twist of an ending.” — Sarah Damoff, bestselling author of The Bright Years

Booklist gave it a great review, saying:

Be prepared to reflect on what makes a well-lived life and to shed some tears before sending a copy to a friend. A good suggestion for fans of Matt Haig, Gabrielle Zevin, or Marcus Zusak.

Listen to this:

This novel has all the ingredients of unforgettability: a plot you’ve never seen, characters you want to love, writing that glimmers on the page, and a spectacular ending that will smack you in the face with an aching joy. Days later, I’m still brimming. — Monica Wood, bestselling author of How to Read a Book.

Green Street in Black and White: Chicago Story Dave Larsen (Reformed Journal Books) $22.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $17.60

You may know our affection for the folks behind the new, indie press curated by the classy writers of The Reformed Journal. This is a stellar novel and if the cover evokes a certain early 60s aesthetic, maybe even conjuring A Christmas Story you wouldn’t be far off. This fiction project is based on real life settings in early 1960s Green Street, a “neighborhood brimming with racial change.” Dave Larson takes readers back to “a summer of social upheaval when youthful mischief collided with the weight of adult fears.”

This is not just a nostalgic tales about growing up in a close night Chicago neighborhood. As Marilyn McEntyre writes, it is a “sharply focused challenge to polity fictions we still live by.”

More than one reader has said “this is my story, too” and “Dave raises up characters so realistic that I clearly recognize them from y own neighborhood back in the ‘60s.”

A novelist friend, Hugh Cook, observes that “Green Street explores two powerful and basic themes: a. Young man’s difficult journey from childhood innocence to maturity, Gandhis experience of the damaging results racism, involving fear, hate, loyalty, and destructive allegiances.” Hugh continues, “Larsen conveys these themes with understanding, sensitivity and honesty.

Can a book be both fun and troubling? Can a novel be a really entertaining read and still convict with a powerful punch? Calvin University sociologist and nonfiction author on these very themes (see his amazing academic work Shades of White: Evangelical Congregations and Urban Departure) says it is “a gripping story about race, ethnicity, and religion in a Chicago neighborhood convulsing with the anxiety and violence of social change.”  Wow.

The Mountains We Call Home: The Book Woman’s Legacy Kim Michele Richardson (Sourcebooks Legacy) $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

A few years ago we promoted a marvelous Christian novel calledThe Moonlight School by Suzanne Woods Fisher  that fictionalized the real life Cora Wilson Stewart who started evening reading classes in the early 1900s of Rowan County, Kentucky. Several years later a bestseller appeared by Kim Michele Richardson called The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, with a fictional character named Cussy Carter who was a librarian with the famous (Roosevelt / New Deal sponsored) Kentucky Pack Horse library Project of the 1930s. The books and women are not related but are both great windows into good women doing good work in Appalachia.

We hope you know The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek or its sequel Book Woman’s Daughter.

Now we have a new stand-alone (or a “companion” as they call it) novel about what happens when Cussy returns home, arrested as interracial marriage is considered a crime in 1950s Kentucky. Called “a powerful testament of strength, survival and the magic of the printed word,” The Mountains We Call Home is “wrapped in a vivid portrait Kentucky life” covering everything from incarceration of the poor and powerless to racial questions and the social consequences of fractured family bonds (hints of Wendell Berry, maybe?) It is said to be meticulously researched and a richly detailed look at bustling and complex Louisville. The story starts in 1953.

The Woman of Oak Ridge: A Novel Michelle Shocklee (Tyndale) $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

Michelle Shocklee has been an important writer in the latest wave of excellent religious fiction and we’re glad to have her books (such as All We Thought We Knew or Appalachian Song.) This latest is compelling on a couple levels and has been called “gripping from the first page to the last.”

In a way, one reviewer summarized it by saying The Women of Oak Ridge is “a fascinating exploration of a secret city, its effects on the entire world, and the people who guarded its mysteries.”

It is about a woman Maebelle Willett who starts her new government job in Oak Ridge Tennessee in 1944, eager to send money home to her impoverished family. Secret as it was, then — employees were not informed that they were doing nuclear work related to the atomic bomb —  we now know the disturbing realities. In the plot, Maebelle’s roommate there on the newly built compound learns of some secret dangers and after talking about it, just disappears.

The plot, however, begins in 1979 with a graduate student in Boston where Laurel Willett is doing a thesis, learning about the history of Oak Ridge and the thousands who worked there unknowingly on the atomic bomb. Laurel goes to visit her aunt Maebelle who worked in the “Secret City” and still refuses to talk about it. It gets stickier as Laurel tries to find other old friends and co-workers of her aunt and, yes, tries to find the missing former roommate. What secrets did she hold?

In a personal note at the end from the author, Ms Shocklee shares that she grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where the first atomic bomb (code named Trinity) was tested at 5:29 am on July 16, 1945. Shocklee’s own grandmother witnessed the intense flash, fifty miles away. And, yes, many had mixed feelings about the awful destruction their work would unleash. Further, she confirms that there really was KGB infiltration at Oak Ridge.

A note from this reviewer: one of my favorite books and unforgettable reads is a true memoir, a real-world report from Oak Ridge by Dan Zak, Almighty: Courage, Resistance, and Existential Peril in the Nuclear Age. The journalist Zak tells of the 2012 anti-nuclear war protests at the Y-12 National Security Complex — sometimes called The Reservation in Shocklee’s novel — and the peace activists (including then 82-year old Catholic nun, Sister Megan Rice) who did civil disobedience there to bear witness against the evils of this gruesome technology. It is a very different book than The Women of Oak Ridge but might be worth reading later.

Yesteryear: A Novel Caro Claire Burke (Knopf) $30.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00

Okay, I’ll admit it: I just wasn’t interested in this edgy, contemporary novel about a modern tradwife media influencer who, weirdly, flies back in time — I’m not a fan of those sorts, except the spectacular Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver. But here we are, with Yesteryear being very much discussed, with the debut writer on talk shows and sounding fascinating. One reviewer said it was “shot through with humor and yet laced with darkness.” As biting satires often are, I think this is actually pretty dark, about both how social media can spin a lie, but also how the tradwife lifestyle and value stem isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. Frighteningly perceptive, they say. Okay

And, it is said to be a wild ride and hard to put down.

“Yesteryear is the novel I didn’t know I needed” says Ashley Audrain, author of The Push. It may be a clever “excavation of motherhood and faith and online fame” but I still am not convinced I care. You might, though, and we have it.

Blue Miles: A Monastic Novel Fr. Thomas Esposito (Ignatius) $18.95 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.16

Have you ever read a novel written by a Cistercian monk? No, me either. I’m grateful for the serious fictional projects of the conservative Catholic publisher (they do, for instance, the many good novels of Michael O’Brian.) This new one, Blue Miles, is cleverly arranged around the hours and has endorsements from some other thoughtful monastic scholars. (And, so, Michael O’Brien, of Father Elijah and other novels.) He says, “Every line, eery page, of this extraordinary book breathes authenticity, along with the authors profound understanding of the vagaries of human growth — for monks and laypeople alike, in weakness and strength.”

This careful story is set in the Cistercian cloister — starting at the prayer service called Matins at 5:30 am — and is said to be “gently comedic” and “sharply witty.”  The silence of the monastery invites various members to ponder their own interior lives and their relationship with Christ, even in their very real-world suffering.

A-Tumblin’ Down Sarah Hinlicky Wilson (Thornbush Press) $22.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39

Sometime I ask myself where we find these indie books from indie publishers, and offer a breath of gratitude. Wilson is a fine writer, it seems, a thoughtful writer. That her epigrams that intro each chapter are from (she tells us) John Hector St John’s Letters from an American Farmer written in 1782 might be a hint of her thoughtfulness. In her acknowledgments she thanks a friend who got her a rare copy of an old Rumor Godden book.

The novel is set in rural Shibboleth, New York, in 1988. “The Abney family is settled in at Mt. Moriah Lutheran Church” but it isn’t clear what is going to happen. Pastor Donald is haunted (in part by his sense of a “probing, judging” memory of his revivalist grandfather) and some revelations of family secrets on his wife’s side. There’s an eleven year old daughter and, tragedy.

As it says on the back, A-Tumblin’ Down “topples headlong into grief and explores the strong grace needed to survive. Yet the story is not only sad and serious it’s also funny, joyful, and enchanted.”

Hildegard of Bingen: Lady of the Light, Woman for the World – A Historical Novel Joan Ohanneson (Crossroad) $24.95 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.96

This historically accurate medieval novel about the famous 12th century Hildegard got great reviews when it came out in the 1990s; it was reissued a decade ago and we just rediscovered it. Mystics and nuns gave it good blurbs, making this a reliably reading about her story. Hildegard was an artist and chemist, healer and poet, who was eventually named an official Doctor of the Church. This is a rare title, and it might take a bit of time to re-order more. If you like medieval stories, it might be well worth the wait.

The Teacher of Nomad Land: A World Ware II Story Daniel Nayeri (Levine Querido) $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

This is the most recent YA novel by the greatly appreciated and vivid storyteller, Nayeri; we’ve know him from selling his older books at the Jubilee conference in Pittsburgh years ago (he is speaking there again next year in 2027!) and at an event at Tim Keller’s Redeemer Presbyterian years ago but he became globally famous with the huge popularity of Everything Sad Is Untrue (A True Story) a fictional retelling of his life as an Iranian immigrant kid being raised in Oklahoma. Teacher of Nomad Land is a historical fiction work so good NPR said it “isn’t just a book — it’s a prayer, a lament, a master class in storytelling.” The Washington Post says “it pierces the heart with precision” It is set among a Persian boy becoming a “teacher of nomads” helping a Jewish boy on the run from the Nazis who are (along with the Soviets from the other side) bearing down on Iran.

The Many Assassinations of Samir the Seller of Dreams Daniel Nayeri (Lantern) $10.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $8.79

After his fame from Everything Sad Is Untrue, Daniel wrote this rollicking story of storytellers and it won the Newberry Award in 2023! Now out in paperback, we thought we’d remind you of it. As it says on the back, it is about “mercenaries, merchants, and monks” who “tumble downtime Silk Road in this epic adventure with twists and turns.”

The opening is a young orphan running from his life (which, in a way, is how Teacher of Nomad Lands begins.) Samir is a “portly huckster” liar on the run from a wild array of colorful (dangerous) characters on the young boy involved in this swashbuckling tale. A fun read!

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

This came out late last year and was a big item on Christmas lists from Mitford fans everywhere. It is still only in hardcover (although a paperback is coming in October. For now, if you want a sweet and uplifting summer read, any of the Mitford novels are well worth reading. This latest has been called a “heartwarming gift we all need” and is clever and wise and touching. And romantic. It starts when Father Tim writes a very private letter to his beloved wife that becomes less private than they thought and as the story unfolds readers learn of backstories of various town characters (like Hope, the village librarian) and how “a letter can change a life.”

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