So, who was Jesus? A vagabond. A nobody from the middle of nowhere. Perfectly positioned for insignificance. And yet, this itinerant teacher changed the world. He came to set the record straight—to expose the lies and reveal the truth; to teach us how to live a life of joy, peace, and purpose; to be our guide. Jesus offers a new life, charged with supernatural power and sealed with an eternal guarantee. Our destinies are connected, each one a modest but essential element in a much grander narrative, a chronicle filled with brokenness and failure but also with rescue and redemption. We innately understand that our lives are part of a larger, more beautiful story. This book is about exploring that story and discovering a brave new world. A world where guilt and shame are sent to die and where love and grace rise from the grave. Discover the truth and allow Jesus to set you free.

Are you bedraggled, beat-up, burnt-out? Most of us believe in God’s grace—in theory. But somehow we can’t seem to apply it in our daily lives. We continue to see Him as a small-minded bookkeeper, tallying our failures and successes on a score sheet. Yet God gives us His grace, willingly, no matter what we’ve done. We come to Him as ragamuffins—dirty, bedraggled, and beat-up. And when we sit at His feet, He smiles upon us, the chosen objects of His “furious love.” Brennan Manning’s now-classic meditation on grace and what it takes to access it—simple honesty—has changed thousands of lives. Now with a Ragamuffin’s thirty-day spiritual journey guide, it will change yours, too. Includes a 30-Day Spiritual Journey Guide! “Brennan Manning does a masterful job of blowing the dust off of shop-worn theology and allowing God’s grace to do what only God’s grace can do—amaze.” -Max Lucado, Bestselling author of The Gift for All People

That's My Baby! CALL ME DR. MOM…. Intent on having a child of her own, unmarried obstetrician Bailey Coltrain knew plenty about birthing babies—yet next to nothing about raising them! But surely by posing as nanny for construction worker Gib Harden's three motherless tots, she'd get all the experience she required…. Bailey watched the strong, sexy single dad pack talcum and bottles in his rugged leather tool belt. But she herself proved a mess at motherhood! Until Bailey finally learned that all Gib and his gang really required…was her love. THAT'S MY BABY! Sometimes bringing up baby can bring surprises…and showers of love!

In this sensational New York Times bestseller, Eric Jerome Dickey explores how real people come together and fall apart in a story about a love that starts with a lie.... Dana Ann Smith has ditched New York—and a relationship gone bad—for Los Angeles, looking for a new man, a new career, and some stability. She thinks she's found it in Vincent Calvalry Browne Jr., a handsome, hardworking aerospace tech. They've offered just enough of themselves to make it the perfect romance. And they've withheld just enough to ruin it. When their secrets come to light, Dana and Vince come face-to-face with the fact that the passionate game between lovers and liars has just begun....

Imagine an organizational model for church leadership that enables the entire team to unleash their full potential. The joy and vigor coming from a collective strength, intelligence, and skill in the community of leaders not only brings greater potency but better yields for your ministry. What would it be like to see this kind of healthy leadership reproduced into the second, third, and fourth generation, on multiple strands? Leveraging the metaphor Ori Brafman popularized in his NYT best-selling book, The Starfish and the Spider, Rob Wegner, Lance Ford, and Alan Hirsch show: How to take a close look at your church's organizational structure and how to adapt instead of simply adopt a certain kind of structural approach. How churches can function without a rigid central authority, making them nimbler in reacting to external forces. How seeding starfish networks inside today's churches will prepare the church of tomorrow to be agile while maintaining the accountability to be effective. The Starfish and the Spirit is about creating a culture where church leaders view themselves as curators of a community on a mission, not the source of certainty for every question and project. It's about creating a team of humble leaders "in the middle" of the church, not at the top--leaders who naturally reproduce multiple generations of leaders, from the middle out.

Saltwater Redemption is a fictional memoir concerning the life experiences of its protagonist, Mayson Darcy, set in in Avalon, New Jersey. The plot tracks Mr. Darcys attempt to rediscover the golden innocence hed experienced as a kid growing up down the shore, revolving around his nineteenth summer living with a group of new friends and old acquaintancesa group of gender-segregated collegians who pick themselves to live in a summer shore house and have their lives recorded by a mad diarist. It explores the romance and magic of seashore living, as well as the perennially relatable themes of ones search for God, romantic love, and friendship. The novel begins with Maysons first recollection of swimming in the ocean, out past the drowning waters with his mother as a young child in Avalon, and ends with him venturing forth, out beyond the bow into an eternity of moonlight. In between, the narrative recounts some chronologically hopscotching recollections, including his enduring (and at times unrequited) love for three graceful ladies: Grayce Bateman, Lyrica Le Fay, and Sadie McGoldrick. Saltwater Redemption highlights the timelessness of certain settings: places to which we often return to escape from the manifold insanities and belittlements of the world in order to discover where we essentially belong. Above all else, Saltwater Redemption is poetically written filled with much humor and heartbreak, as well as a deep-seated admiration for the ocean and its manifold heroines, concerning a life inevitably crested in one timeless Arthurian locale.

Heaven. Eternity. The Afterlife. Mention any of these concepts, and people of all ages and from all walks of life are certain to have opinions. Maybe that's why there are so many books and movies that feature heaven-and-back experiences. But how can we know if those accounts are accurate? How can we know for sure what heaven will be like? According to New Testament scholar and author Scot McKnight, all we need to do is to turn to the Bible to answer our questions. Separating fact from fiction, McKnight helps the reader examine the over-arching story of scripture in order to discover what awaits us. Heaven isn't the construction of a fairytale or some mythical narrative. It's very real; it's very good; and it's very much the fulfillment of God's promise to us.

'Poignant and inspiring' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'The World My Wilderness . . . had a powerful effect on me as a young reader' HERMIONE LEE, GUARDIAN 'An elegiac, evocative depiction of the aftermath of the Second World War' PARIS REVIEW It is 1946 and the people of France and England are facing the aftermath of the War. Sent by her beautiful, indolent mother to England, Barbary Deniston is thrown into the care of her distinguished father and conventional stepmother. Barbary has spent her childhood years in the sunshine of Provence. During the War, she ran wild with the Maquis, experiencing collaboration, betrayal and resistance. In peacetime the young woman has been taken away from all she knows and placed into the drab austerity of post-war London life. Confused and unhappy, she discovers the flowering bomb craters around St Paul's Cathedral. Here, in the bombed heart of London, with the outcasts living on the edge of society, she finds an echo of the wilderness of Provence and is forced to confront the wilderness within herself.

1920s OXFORD: HOME TO C.S. LEWIS, J.R.R. TOLKIEN... AND ANNA FRANCIS, A YOUNG GREEK REFUGEE LOOKING TO ESCAPE THE GRIM REALITY OF HER NEW LIFE. THE NIGHT THEY CROSS PATHS, NONE SUSPECT THE FANTASTIC WORLD AT WORK AROUND THEM. Anna Francis lives in a tall old house with her father and her doll Penelope. She is a refugee, a piece of flotsam washed up in England by the tides of the Great War and the chaos that trailed in its wake. Once upon a time, she had a mother and a brother, and they all lived together in the most beautiful city in the world, by the shores of Homer’s wine-dark sea. But that is all gone now, and only to her doll does she ever speak of it, because her father cannot bear to hear. She sits in the shadows of the tall house and watches the rain on the windows, creating worlds for herself to fill out the loneliness. The house becomes her own little kingdom, an island full of dreams and half-forgotten memories. And then one winter day, she finds an interloper in the topmost, dustiest attic of the house. A boy named Luca with yellow eyes, who is as alone in the world as she is. That day, she’ll lose everything in her life, and find the only real friend she may ever know.