Anyone who has had children for more than a day knows parenting is about as easy as swimming the backstroke across the Atlantic Ocean. Rewarding, yes. Enjoyable, yes. Enlightening, yes. Challenging, for sure. Easy? No way. Parenting can be difficult, and painful, but sometimes love stops us right in our tracks overwhelms us. Sometimes life just turns over and spills out joy. >>Russell is having a bad hair day. Patrick’s latest hamster has disappeared. Lauren is wearing her most outlandish dress-up clothes and is out visiting elderly neighbor ladies. Donovan has wiggled a loose front tooth all week and now it’s finally under his pillow. Zachary yearns to go camping alone with his father, but has to put up with the whole family going along instead. There is no syrup for the Saturday-morning pancakes. Laundry is piling up everywhere. Meet Zachary, Russell, Donovan, Patrick, and Lauren, the lively brood of Thom and Lisa Hunter. As the head of this energetic household, Thom often feels like an air traffic controller at a major airport. But as he determinedly guides his children in the way they should go, he is surprised to find himself learning from them. And each day has new lessons to teach and new blessings to bestow. With gentle humor and delightful storytelling skill, Thom Hunter explores the joys and trials of Christian parenting through real-life tales from the front lines. Poignant, bittersweet, and often profound, these episodes will elicit chuckles from parents who have “been there,” as well as provide comfort and encouragement for those just embarking on their parenting journey.

New York Times bestselling author Katherine Arden returns with another creepy, spine-tingling adventure in the critically acclaimed Small Spaces Quartet. Having survived sinister scarecrows and the malevolent smiling man in Small Spaces, newly minted best friends Ollie, Coco, and Brian are ready to spend a relaxing winter break skiing together with their parents at Mount Hemlock Resort. But when a snowstorm sets in, causing the power to flicker out and the cold to creep closer and closer, the three are forced to settle for hot chocolate and board games by the fire. Ollie, Coco, and Brian are determined to make the best of being snowed in, but odd things keep happening. Coco is convinced she has seen a ghost, and Ollie is having nightmares about frostbitten girls pleading for help. Then Mr. Voland, a mysterious ghost hunter, arrives in the midst of the storm to investigate the hauntings at Hemlock Lodge. Ollie, Coco, and Brian want to trust him, but Ollie's watch, which once saved them from the smiling man, has a new cautionary message: BEWARE. With Mr. Voland's help, Ollie, Coco, and Brian reach out to the dead voices at Mount Hemlock. Maybe the ghosts need their help--or maybe not all ghosts can or should be trusted. Dead Voices is a terrifying follow-up to Small Spaces with thrills and chills galore and the captive foreboding of a classic ghost story.

This rerelease of the popular Stories for a Man's Heart is an enjoyable collection of quotes, humorous stories, and short stories selected just for a man's heart, repackaged in an attractive new cover. These uplifting, feel-good, and motivational stories will inspire men to be "all they can be." The book features contributions from many of today's most respected and loved communicators and is divided into sections on virtue, love, motivation, encouragement, fatherhood, sports, legacy, and faith. Each inspiring story touches on the values and virtues that mean the most to men.

This book is for people who are dissatisfied with mainstream organized religions but still have sincere questions about God and truth.

Writing as a seminary-trained sociologist, Frederick W. Schmidt, Jr. concentrates on the roles of clergywomen in five denominations—Episcopal, United Methodist, Evangelical Lutheran, Southern Baptist, and Roman Catholic. He maintains that behind the façade of equanimity, women are often relegated to the outskirts of church hierarchy. In compelling stories, we learn about the Episcopal woman denied a job because she was too short; the Methodist women burdened by the old saw of women preachers being like dogs walking on their hind legs; the Evangelical Lutheran who, in protest to her denomination's trickle-down reform, camped outside her bishop's office; and Roman Catholic women who, frustrated and beleaguered by their church's refusal to ordain them, become active reformers. To substantiate his assertion that churches are cultures as well as organizations, Schmidt examines both official policies regarding women's ordination in each denomination and the cultural context in which those policies must play out. Through their stories, the clergywomen remind us that the church influences society whether society acknowledges it or not.

Whether single, separated or someone's spouse, everyone wants to find and keep this elusive thing called love. Bestselling author and foremost relationship expert Barbara De Angelis teams up as a co-author of Chicken Soup for the Couple's Soul, a collection of heartwarming stories about how real people discovered true love with the person of their dreams.

Readers caring for an ailing family member will find support and encouragement in these stories by others like them. Chicken Soup for the Soul: Family Caregivers will inspire and uplift family members who are making sacrifices to make sure their loved ones are well cared for. Do you have a family member who requires constant care? You are not alone. This collection offers support and encouragement in its 101 stories for family caregivers of all ages, including the “sandwich” generation caring for a family member while raising their children. With stories by those on the receiving end of the care too. These stories of love, sacrifice, and lessons will inspire and uplift family members making sacrifices to make sure their loved ones are well cared for, whether in their own homes or elsewhere.

From one of Italy’s greatest writers, a stunning novel “filled with shimmering, risky, darting observation” (Colm Tóibín) After WWII, a small Italian town struggles to emerge from under the thumb of Fascism. With wit, tenderness, and irony, Elsa, the novel’s narrator, weaves a rich tapestry of provincial Italian life: two generations of neighbors and relatives, their gossip and shattered dreams, their heartbreaks and struggles to find happiness. Elsa wants to imagine a future for herself, free from the expectations and burdens of her town’s history, but the weight of the past will always prove unbearable, insistently posing the question: “Why has everything been ruined?”