A young woman is viciously murdered in Queens. The killer has left every indication that this will be the first in a long reign of terror. Detective Kate Manning is hunting the elusive butcher while desperately trying to decipher his message. Following the trail of blood, Kate will be pushed to her limits, as she is drawn into an age old battle that challenges what it means to have faith in God and in man.

Inspired by real-world events, AN ABSENCE OF FAITH: A Tale of Afghanistan is a novel of the collapse of Afghanistan, seen through the eyes of two protagonists, Daniyal, an Afghan army private, and Colonel Trevanathan, a U.S. Army officer, assigned the Sisyphean task of ending Afghan government corruption. Daniyal is a university student in Kabul, who is forced into the Afghan army by a military press gang. He is starved, beaten, and watches his friends die from incompetent leadership. When he is made the Headquarters clerk for the heartless Command Sergeant Major Mahmood, he learns his army’s leaders are getting rich from selling their soldiers’ food and medical supplies. Daniyal is torn between the privilege and safety his headquarters’ job provides versus his complicity in the widespread corruption. The second parallel story is the arrival in Kabul of U.S. Army Colonel William Trevanathan, who is to be the Counter Corruption Director for the NATO command in Afghanistan. It is November 2015. Trevanathan learns that multiple NATO countries plan to pull out of the war from their frustration with Afghan embezzlement of NATO military aid. The domino effect of departing Western allies will likely lose the war against the Taliban, as the Afghan military is incapable of fighting on its own. Trevanathan’s job is to prevent that NATO pullout by ensuring the corrupt Afghan government players are prosecuted, despite no Afghan politician or senior military commander having been charged in the past fifteen years. The challenge is great enough, before Colonel Trevanathan learns his efforts are being undermined by The U.S. Embassy. Both Daniyal and Trevanathan embark on a Kafka-esque adventure across the breadth of Afghanistan to save the Afghan people and themselves, as they fight to cling to their humanity and beliefs in a war where allies are enemies and yes almost always means no. For anyone who has ever wanted clarity why the U.S. was unable to defeat the Taliban despite spending $2 trillion, investing twenty years into building the Afghan National Army, and suffering tens of thousands of U.S. casualties, this is the book you've been waiting for.

In his last book, Ronald Dworkin addresses questions that men and women have asked through the ages: What is religion and what is God’s place in it? What is death and what is immortality? Based on the 2011 Einstein Lectures, Religion without God is inspired by remarks Einstein made that if religion consists of awe toward mysteries which “manifest themselves in the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, and which our dull faculties can comprehend only in the most primitive forms,” then, he, Einstein, was a religious person. Dworkin joins Einstein’s sense of cosmic mystery and beauty to the claim that value is objective, independent of mind, and immanent in the world. He rejects the metaphysics of naturalism—that nothing is real except what can be studied by the natural sciences. Belief in God is one manifestation of this deeper worldview, but not the only one. The conviction that God underwrites value presupposes a prior commitment to the independent reality of that value—a commitment that is available to nonbelievers as well. So theists share a commitment with some atheists that is more fundamental than what divides them. Freedom of religion should flow not from a respect for belief in God but from the right to ethical independence. Dworkin hoped that this short book would contribute to rational conversation and the softening of religious fear and hatred. Religion without God is the work of a humanist who recognized both the possibilities and limitations of humanity.

Without a Doubt provides answers to tough questions about Christianity that assure the heart and satisfy the mind of Christian, seeker, and skeptic alike.

Looking at both historical and contemporary contexts, the author argues that religion has played a major role in suppressing scientific pursuit.

“If there were a Guinness Book of World Records entry for ‘amount of times having prayed the sinner’s prayer,’ I’m pretty sure I’d be a top contender,” says pastor and author J. D. Greear. He struggled for many years to gain an assurance of salvation and eventually learned he was not alone. “Lack of assurance” is epidemic among evangelical Christians. In Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart, J. D. shows that faulty ways of present- ing the gospel are a leading source of the confusion. Our presentations may not be heretical, but they are sometimes misleading. The idea of “asking Jesus into your heart” or “giving your life to Jesus” often gives false assurance to those who are not saved—and keeps those who genuinely are saved from fully embracing that reality. Greear unpacks the doctrine of assurance, showing that salvation is a posture we take to the promise of God in Christ, a posture that begins at a certain point and is maintained for the rest of our lives. He also answers the tough questions about assurance: What exactly is faith? What is repentance? Why are there so many warnings that seem to imply we can lose our salvation? Such issues are handled with respect to the theological rigors they require, but Greear never loses his pastoral sensitivity or a communication technique that makes this message teachable to a wide audience from teens to adults.

In a consumer-driven and technologized world, can we still experience the mystery of God? This book answers yes by exploring the rich resources of the Christian tradition of thinking and speaking about God. Focusing on God’s dialectical character—divine availability (“presence”) and divine excess (“absence”)—and the belief that “God is love” (1 John 4:16), professor Anthony J. Godzieba tracks how God became a problem in Western culture, then responds by showing how human experience is open to divine transcendence and how that openness encounters the revelation of God as Trinity. The book’s contemporary edge comes from its insistence that belief as embodied performance is the most authentic way to participate in the mystery of God’s love, which is “the answer to the mystery of the world and human beings” (Walter Kasper).

Late pastor Ron Dunn's acclaimed book clarifies the differences between true and counterfeit faith, showing faith's rewards to be more about experiencing God's presence than in earthly blessings.

Pastor John Piper shows how to sever the clinging roots of sin that ensnare us, including anxiety, pride, shame, impatience, covetousness, bitterness, despondency, and lust in Battling Unbelief. When faith flickers, stoke the fire. No one sins out of duty. We sin because it offers some promise of happiness. That promise enslaves us, until we believe that God is more desirable than life itself (Psalm 63:3). Only the power of God’s superior promises in the gospel can emancipate our hearts from servitude to the shallow promises and fleeting pleasures of sin. Delighting in the bounty of God’s glorious gospel promises will free us for a less sin-encumbered life, to the glory of Christ. Rooted in solid biblical reflection, this book aims to help guide you through the battles to the joys of victory by the power of the gospel and its superior pleasure.

In this searing meditation on the bonds of family and the allure of extremist faith, one of today’s most celebrated Christian writers recounts his unexpected journey from a strict fundamentalist upbringing to a life of compassion and grace—a revelatory memoir that “invites comparison to Hillbilly Elegy” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). “Searing, heartrending . . . This stunning tale reminds us that the only way to keep living is to ask God for the impossible: love, forgiveness, and hope.”—Kate Bowler, New York Times bestselling author of Everything Happens for a Reason Raised by an impoverished widow who earned room and board as a Bible teacher in 1950s Atlanta, Philip Yancey and his brother, Marshall, found ways to venture out beyond the confines of their eight-foot-wide trailer. But when Yancey was in college, he uncovered a shocking secret about his father’s death—a secret that began to illuminate the motivations that drove his mother to extreme, often hostile religious convictions and a belief that her sons had been ordained for a divine cause. Searching for answers, Yancey dives into his family origins, taking us on an evocative journey from the backwoods of the Bible Belt to the bustling streets of Philadelphia; from trailer parks to church sanctuaries; from family oddballs to fire-and-brimstone preachers and childhood awakenings through nature, music, and literature. In time, the weight of religious and family pressure sent both sons on opposite paths—one toward healing from the impact of what he calls a “toxic faith,” the other into a self-destructive spiral. Where the Light Fell is a gripping family narrative set against a turbulent time in post–World War II America, shaped by the collision of Southern fundamentalism with the mounting pressures of the civil rights movement and Sixties-era forces of social change. In piecing together his fragmented personal history and his search for redemption, Yancey gives testament to the enduring power of our hunger for truth and the possibility of faith rooted in grace instead of fear. “I truly believe this is the one book I was put on earth to write,” says Yancey. “So many of the strands from my childhood—racial hostility, political division, culture wars—have resurfaced in modern form. Looking back points me forward.”