Full of practical advice, this bestselling book by Nicky and Sila Lee is easy to read and designed to prepare, build, and even mend marriages. The Marriage Book is essential reading for any married or engaged couple. This resource addresses questions like: How can we be happily married to one person for our entire life? How do we resolve conflict? How can we discover and rediscover sexual intimacy? The Marriage Course is a series of seven sessions, designed to help couples invest in their relationship and build a strong marriage. It serves as a bridge between the church and local community by recognizing the need to go beyond the social, as well as physical, walls of the church to help couples with their relationships. Marriage Course is easy to run; the talks are available on DVD (sold separately) and each guest and leader receives a manual. If you enjoy hosting people and have a passion for strengthening family life, you could run a course!

The definitive anthology of wisdom and wit about one of life’s most complex, intriguing, and personal subjects. When and whom do you marry? How do you keep a spouse content? Do all engaged couples get cold feet? How cold is so cold that you should pivot and flee? Where and how do children fit in? Is infidelity always wrong? In this volume, you won’t find a single answer to your questions about marriage; you will find hundreds. Spanning centuries and cultures, sources and genres, The Marriage Book offers entries from ancient history and modern politics, poetry and pamphlets, plays and songs, newspaper ads and postcards. It is an A to Z compendium, exploring topics from Adam and Eve to Anniversaries, Fidelity to Freedom, Separations to Sex. In this volume, you’ll hear from novelists, clergymen, sex experts, and presidents, with guest appearances by the likes of Liz and Dick, Ralph and Alice, Louis CK, and Neil Patrick Harris. Casanova calls marriage the tomb of love, and Stephen King calls it his greatest accomplishment. With humor, perspective, breadth, and warmth, The Marriage Book is sure to become a classic.

“These tender, sly, plainspoken poems are a profound (and sexy) hymn to a long marriage.” —Chase Twichell, author of Things As It Is Writing love poems fifty years into a marriage is no easy task: “If he exaggerates his love, she’ll know . . . And if his desire for her is undiminished, / who would believe?” But in A Marriage Book, James P. Lenfestey meets his own challenge with aplomb. These poems drop readers into the rich, textured world of one couple’s enduring intimacy, from the warmth of a bedroom occupied by two to squabbles over miscommunications and crumbs in the kitchen. As the marriage (and the poems) transition into parenthood, Lenfestey illuminates the equally stalwart wonder of observing one’s children as they age and develop. Paternal love persists, and is even fed by, watching his children argue, suffer their own mistakes, and roar horrible breath at breakfast. A Marriage Book is a collection that essences the magic from the household quotidian, creating a technicolor portrait of a durable, long-lasting love and a vibrant, dynamic family. “James Lenfestey, after a lifetime of attentive writing, has lately done poems for family and marriage that put most of us to shame.” —Gary Snyder, TheNew York Times Book Review

Marriage Course, developed by Nicky and Sila Lee, is a seven-session study for couples to obtain the tools to build a strong and healthy relationship that lasts a lifetime.The manual highlights the key points from the talks and contains all of the exercises with plenty of room for making notes. The course covers: An Introduction to Marriage Course Building Strong Foundations The Art of Communication Resolving Conflict Forgiveness The Impact of Family - past and present Good Sex Love in Action Marriage Course Party Coping with Times of Separation (optional session) Marriage Course serves as a bridge between the church and local community by recognizing the need to go beyond the social, as well as physical, walls of the church to help couples with their relationships. The courses are easy to run, and the talks are also available on DVD (sold separately). If you enjoy hosting people and have a passion for strengthening family life, you could run a course!

From America's favorite marriage expert and author of the New York Times #1 bestseller, The 5 Love Languages® Respected marriage counselor Gary Chapman looks at the key issues that will help you build the marriage you've always wanted, answering such real-life questions as . . . Why won't they change? Why do we always fight about tasks and responsibilities? Why should we have to work at sex? In the warm, practical style that has endeared him to audiences worldwide, Dr. Chapman delivers advice on all the "big issues," like: Money Communication Decision making In-laws and much more Each chapter includes a "Your Turn" opportunity for reflection and interaction between spouses. Discover the "joy potential" in your marriage and your "ministry potential" for God!

A New York Times Notable Book of 2011 A Publisher's Weekly Top 10 Book of 2011 A Kirkus Reviews Top 25 Best Fiction of 2011 Title One of Library Journal's Best Books of 2011 A Salon Best Fiction of 2011 title One of The Telegraph's Best Fiction Books of the Year 2011 It's the early 1980s—the country is in a deep recession, and life after college is harder than ever. In the cafés on College Hill, the wised-up kids are inhaling Derrida and listening to Talking Heads. But Madeleine Hanna, dutiful English major, is writing her senior thesis on Jane Austen and George Eliot, purveyors of the marriage plot that lies at the heart of the greatest English novels. As Madeleine tries to understand why "it became laughable to read writers like Cheever and Updike, who wrote about the suburbia Madeleine and most of her friends had grown up in, in favor of reading the Marquis de Sade, who wrote about deflowering virgins in eighteenth-century France," real life, in the form of two very different guys, intervenes. Leonard Bankhead—charismatic loner, college Darwinist, and lost Portland boy—suddenly turns up in a semiotics seminar, and soon Madeleine finds herself in a highly charged erotic and intellectual relationship with him. At the same time, her old "friend" Mitchell Grammaticus—who's been reading Christian mysticism and generally acting strange—resurfaces, obsessed with the idea that Madeleine is destined to be his mate. Over the next year, as the members of the triangle in this amazing, spellbinding novel graduate from college and enter the real world, events force them to reevaluate everything they learned in school. Leonard and Madeleine move to a biology Laboratory on Cape Cod, but can't escape the secret responsible for Leonard's seemingly inexhaustible energy and plunging moods. And Mitchell, traveling around the world to get Madeleine out of his mind, finds himself face-to-face with ultimate questions about the meaning of life, the existence of God, and the true nature of love. Are the great love stories of the nineteenth century dead? Or can there be a new story, written for today and alive to the realities of feminism, sexual freedom, prenups, and divorce? With devastating wit and an abiding understanding of and affection for his characters, Jeffrey Eugenides revives the motivating energies of the Novel, while creating a story so contemporary and fresh that it reads like the intimate journal of our own lives.

Compares the transitional cycles of marriage to those of nature, describes the attitudes and emotions of each season, and offers seven strategies that enable couples to enhance and improve their marital relationship.

The only way to secure her dream is to marry a handsome stranger . . . When Rose and Jack meet, she has just lost her uncle, and with him her dream of owning a coffee shop. Rose wanted nothing more than to open a café in her uncle’s building. But her uncle’s will is clear – the building goes to Rose’s husband. Not to her. Then, his lawyer, Jack, offers an unusual solution… she can marry him. She’ll get the café and he’ll get the building. For some reason, Rose agrees. It might be a marriage of convenience but it’s anything but simple. Despite it being his idea, Jack is unbearably surly... But then he does something that shows Rose he might just have a softer side. Maybe love can start with a contract… but will Rose still feel that way when she learns the full terms of their deal?

Describes what marriage should be according to the Bible, arguing that marriage is a tool to bring individuals closer to God, and provides meaningful instruction on how to have a successful marriage.

“After years of debate and inquiry, the key to a great marriage remained shrouded in mystery. Until now...”—Carol Dweck, author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success Eli J. Finkel's insightful and ground-breaking investigation of marriage clearly shows that the best marriages today are better than the best marriages of earlier eras. Indeed, they are the best marriages the world has ever known. He presents his findings here for the first time in this lucid, inspiring guide to modern marital bliss. The All-or-Nothing Marriage reverse engineers fulfilling marriages—from the “traditional” to the utterly nontraditional—and shows how any marriage can be better. The primary function of marriage from 1620 to 1850 was food, shelter, and protection from violence; from 1850 to 1965, the purpose revolved around love and companionship. But today, a new kind of marriage has emerged, one oriented toward self-discover, self-esteem, and personal growth. Finkel combines cutting-edge scientific research with practical advice; he considers paths to better communication and responsiveness; he offers guidance on when to recalibrate our expectations; and he even introduces a set of must-try “lovehacks.” This is a book for the newlywed to the empty nester, for those thinking about getting married or remarried, and for anyone looking for illuminating advice that will make a real difference to getting the most out of marriage today.