No one was more surprised than Andrew Klavan when, at the age of fifty, he found himself about to be baptized. The Great Good Thing tells the soul-searching story of a man born into an age of disbelief who had to abandon everything he thought he knew in order to find his way to the truth. Best known for his hard-boiled, white-knuckle thrillers and for the movies made from them--among them True Crime and Don’t Say a Word--bestselling author and Edgar Award-winner Klavan was born in a suburban Jewish enclave outside New York City. He left the faith of his childhood behind to live most of his life as an agnostic until he found himself mulling over the hard questions that so many other believers have asked: How can I be certain in my faith? What's the truth, and how can I know it's the truth? How can you think, live, and make choices and judgments day by day if you don't know for sure? In The Great Good Thing, Klavan shares that his troubled childhood caused him to live inside the stories in his head and grow up to become an alienated young writer whose disconnection and rage devolved into depression and suicidal breakdown. In those years, Klavan fought to ignore the insistent call of God, a call glimpsed in a childhood Christmas at the home of a beloved babysitter, in a transcendent moment at his daughter's birth, and in a snippet of a baseball game broadcast that moved him from the brink of suicide. But more than anything, the call of God existed in stories--the stories Klavan loved to read and the stories he loved to write. Join Klavan as he discovers the meaning of belief, the importance of asking tough questions, and the power of sharing your story.

Edgar Award-winner and internationally bestselling novelist tells of his improbable conversion from agnostic Jewish-intellectual to baptized Christian and of the books that led him there. "Had I stumbled on the hallelujah truth, or just gone mad--or, that is, had I gone mad again?" No one was more surprised than Andrew Klavan when, at the age of fifty, he found himself about to be baptized. Best known for his hard-boiled, white-knuckle thrillers and for the movies made from them--among them True Crime (directed by Clint Eastwood) and Don't Say a Word (starring Michael Douglas)--Klavan was born in a suburban Jewish enclave outside New York City. He left the faith of his childhood behind to live most of his life as an agnostic in the secular, sophisticated atmosphere of New York, London, and Los Angeles. But his lifelong quest for truth--in his life and in his work--was leading him to a place he never expected. In The Great Good Thing, Klavan tells how his troubled childhood caused him to live inside the stories in his head and grow up to become an alienated young writer whose disconnection and rage devolved into depression and suicidal breakdown. But he also stumbled into a genuine romance, a passionate and committed marriage whose uncommon and enduring devotion convinced him of the reality of love. In those years, Klavan fought to ignore the insistent call of God, a call glimpsed in a childhood Christmas at the home of a beloved babysitter, in a transcendent moment at his daughter's birth, and in a snippet of a baseball game broadcast that moved him from the brink of suicide. But more than anything, the call of God existed in stories--the stories Klavan loved to read and the stories he loved to write. The Great Good Thing is the dramatic, soul-searching story of a man born into an age of disbelief who had to abandon everything he thought he knew in order to find his way to the truth.

A storybook princess breaks the fourth wall and incites a new kind of adventure in this imaginative middle grade fantasy perfect for fans of Chris Colfer and Gail Carson Levine. Sylvie had an amazing life, but she didn’t get to live it very often. Sylvie has been a twelve-year-old princess for more than eighty years, ever since the book she lives in was first printed. She’s the heroine, and her story is exciting. But that’s the trouble: it’s always exciting in the same way. So when a new Reader opens the book at long last, Sylvie breaks the cardinal rule of all storybook characters: she looks up. And sets into motion a new story all her own. Now, Sylvie is in for an adventure beyond any she could have imagined. As her journey takes her from the pages of a book to the landscape of dreams, Sylvie must summon all her courage to save her kingdom, find her way home, and figure out what it really means to do a Great Good Thing.

Follow Andrew Klavan to a deeper, richer understanding of the words of Jesus. Andrew Klavan believed what he read in the Gospels, but he often struggled to understand what Jesus really meant. So he began a journey of wrestling with the beautiful and often strange words of Jesus. He learned Greek in order to read the Gospels in their original languages, and he vowed to set aside any preconceptions about what the Scriptures say. But it wasn't until he began exploring how some of history's greatest writers wrestled with the same issues we confront today--political upheaval, rejection of social norms, growing disbelief in God--that he found a new way of understanding what Jesus meant. In The Truth and Beauty, Klavan combines a decades-long writing career with a lifetime of reading to discover a fresh understanding of the Gospels. By reading the words of Jesus through the life and work of writers such as William Wordsworth and John Keats, Mary Shelley and Samuel Taylor Coleridge--the English romantics--Klavan discovered a way to encounter Jesus in a deeper and more profound way than ever before. For readers seeking to find renewed meaning in the words of Jesus--and for those who are striving for belief in a materialistic world--The Truth and Beauty offers an intimate account of one man's struggle to understand the Gospels in all their strangeness, and so find his way to a life that is, as he says, "the most creative, the most joyful, and surely the most true."

We live in an age of skepticism. Our society places such faith in empirical reason, historical progress, and heartfelt emotion that it’s easy to wonder: Why should anyone believe in Christianity? What role can faith and religion play in our modern lives? In this thoughtful and inspiring new book, pastor and New York Times bestselling author Timothy Keller invites skeptics to consider that Christianity is more relevant now than ever. As human beings, we cannot live without meaning, satisfaction, freedom, identity, justice, and hope. Christianity provides us with unsurpassed resources to meet these needs. Written for both the ardent believer and the skeptic, Making Sense of God shines a light on the profound value and importance of Christianity in our lives.

Sometimes life just hurts. Out of nowhere, death, illness, unemployment, or a difficult relationship can change our lives and challenge everything we thought we knew—leaving us feeling unable to cope. But, in the midst if all this pain and confusion, we are not alone. Weaving together his personal story, pastoral ministry experience, and biblical insights, best-selling author Paul David Tripp helps us trust God in the midst of suffering. He identifies traps to avoid in our suffering and points us instead to comforts to embrace. This raw yet hope-filled book will help you cling to God's promises when trials come and move forward with the hope of the gospel.

Zach Adams is one of the best detectives in the country. Nicknamed Cowboy, he’s a soft-spoken homicide detective known for his integrity and courage under fire. He serves on a federal task force that has a single mission: to hunt down Dominic Abend, a European gangster who has taken over the American underworld.After a brutal murder gives them a lead, Zach and his tough guy NYPD partner Martin Goulart are finally on Abend’s trail. But things get complicated — and very, very weird. Goulart’s on-the-job enemies are accusing him of corruption. And Zach is beginning to suspect that Abend’s evil goes beyond crime—perhaps to the edge of the supernatural. As his investigation continues in Germany, Zach finds himself lured into the impossible. In a centuries-old forest under a full moon, a beast assaults him, cursing him forever. In the aftermath, Zach is transformed into something horrible —something deadly.Now, the good cop has innocent blood on his hands. He has killed—and will kill again—in the form of a beast who can’t be controlled or stopped. Before he can free himself, he’s going to have to solve the greatest mystery of all: How can you defeat evil when the evil is inside you?

Offers an argument for secular non-believers maintaining that following Jesus Christ as a teacher, example, and primary guide for living can serve to give meaning and direction to those who don't believe in the supernatural elements of Christianity.

“What was this place? Was I crazy? Or was I crazy before, back in L.A.? Was my real life some sort of dream? Was this hell reality?” Austin Lively is a struggling, disillusioned screenwriter whose life is suddenly changed forever when he opens a door and is unwittingly transported to a fantastical medieval realm. Austin finds himself wielding a bloody dagger while standing over a very beautiful and very dead woman. Bewildered and confused, he is seized by castle guards and thrown in a dungeon. Just when he begins to fear the worst, he is suddenly transported back to reality in LA. Did that really just happened? Has he gone insane? Was it all a dream? Did he have a brain tumor? Desperate for answers, he sets out to find them and discovers that the mystery can only be unlocked by a strange piece of fiction that holds the truth about the magical kingdom. But he isn’t the only person searching for the missing manuscript, and his rivals will stop at nothing to get it first. To complicate matters more, Austin soon discovers that he has no control over when he passes between worlds and finds himself out of trust for even the simple things, like walking through doorways. Stuck between dual realities –charged for a murder he doesn’t recall in one and running from a maniacal billionaire who’s determined to kill him in another– Austin’s monotonous life has become an epic adventure of magic, murder, and political intrigue in both the New Republic of Galiana and the streets of Los Angeles California.

What it means to be a Jew lies at the very heart of Confessions of a Secular Jew, a provocative memoir and a thoughtful speculation on the nature of Jewish identity and experience in an increasingly secular world. The legacy bequeathed to Eugene Goodheart was a "progressive" secular Yiddish education which identifi ed Jewish struggles against oppression with working class struggles against exploitation. In the vanguard was the Soviet Union. Goodheart's heroes were Moses, Bar Kochbah, Judah Maccabee, Karl Marx and that strange honorary Jew, Joseph Stalin, whose anti-Semitism would later become known to the world. Confessions of a Secular Jew is the story of Goodheart's disillusionment with the naive, even false, progressivism of that education. At the same time, it is an attempt to rescue and come to grips with the positive remains of that education and heritage.