THE BEAUTY IN BROKENNESS Have you ever tried picking up the broken pieces of a broken ceramic objects or glass and putting them back together? If so, wasn’t it a conscientious task? First, depending on the size of the destruction, you would probably have to search all over the place to recover the broken pieces. Then after collecting all the broken pieces, you are left with yet another formidable task of putting the broken object back to its original form. God makes broken things beautiful. Consent God to heal the wounds of your past heartbreaks and people who left and anyone who couldn’t fully love you. Allow Him teach you the lesson behind each heartbreak. Broken things are despised as meaningless, but God can take what has been broken and remake it into something better, something that He can use for His Glory. Sometimes, God just wants you to surrender. This is a key element of Faith. Surrendering is an act of strength, not weakness. Because it takes a great deal of strength and wisdom to admit that you don’t have all the answers and you can’t change your life. Broken things and broken people are the results of sin.

"Shards of glass can cut and wound or magnify a vision," Terry Tempest Williams tells us. "Mosaic celebrates brokenness and the beauty of being brought together." Ranging from Ravenna, Italy, where she learns the ancient art of mosaic, to the American Southwest, where she observes prairie dogs on the brink of extinction, to a small village in Rwanda where she joins genocide survivors to build a memorial from the rubble of war, Williams searches for meaning and community in an era of physical and spiritual fragmentation. In her compassionate meditation on how nature and humans both collide and connect, Williams affirms a reverence for all life, and constructs a narrative of hopeful acts, taking that which is broken and creating something whole.

Find beauty and hope by facing and dealing with the messiness of family life. The family is an imperfect institution. Broken people become broken parents who make broken families. But actually, broken is normal and exactly where God wants us. In The Beauty of Broken, Elisa Morgan, one of today’s most respected female Christian leaders, for the first time shares her very personal story of brokenness—from her first family of origin to the second, represented by her husband and two grown children. Over the years, Elisa’s family struggled privately with issues many parents must face, including: alcoholism and drug addiction infertility and adoption teen pregnancy and abortion divorce, homosexuality, and death Each story layers onto the next to reveal the brokenness that comes into our lives without invitation. “We’ve bought into the myth of the perfect family,” says Elisa. “Formulaic promises about the family may have originated in well-meaning intentions, but such thinking isn’t realistic. It’s not helpful. It’s not even kind.” Instead she offers hope in the form of “broken family values” that allow parents to grow and thrive with God. Values such as commitment, humility, relinquishment, and respect carry us to new places of understanding. Owning our brokenness shapes us into God’s best idea for us and enables us to discover the beauty in ourselves and each member of our family.

As if her parents' heavy drinking and her father's abuse--which nearly killed her half-brother, Iggy--were not enough, fifteen-year-old Mara is caught kissing her girlfriend, Xylia, by the preacher's son and becomes terrified that her own life is at risk.

A woman who’s lost everything. Taylor is looking for peace and quiet away from the memories of all she’s lost. A small mountain town where no one knows her seems like the perfect escape. A man battling the ghosts of his past. Walker loves his life just the way it is. His town, his family, his brothers in blue. Everything simple and easy—until a chance encounter changes it all. When Taylor’s solitude is interrupted by the rugged cop, they find that the very thing they were avoiding might be just what they both need. As their iron wills clash and passion flares…a killer lurks. And you never know who might be caught in the crosshairs. ****** Read what others are saying about Beautifully Broken Pieces: "A small town romance that gripped me from the very first page. I fell in love with these characters, with the writing, and with this unexpected story. I can't recommend it enough!" - Alessandra Torre, New York Times Bestseller “Heartwarming, romantic and with an added bit of suspense, Beautifully Broken Pieces had me glued to every page! Catherine Cowles, meet your newest super fan.” - Devney Perry, USA Today Bestseller Read what others are saying about Catherine Cowles: “Cowles writes fresh, addicting, and intensely beautiful stories!” - Susan Stoker, New York Times Bestseller "Catherine Cowles has a way of pulling the reader into the world she has created and leaves you there for days after you have read the last page." - Kelly Elliott, New York Times Bestseller Read what reviewers are saying about Beautifully Broken Pieces: “Fans of Kristen Ashley and Devney Perry will really love this one.” - Garden of REden Book Blog “A tender, steamy and poignant love story with a healthy dose of cleverly-plotted mystery and suspense that will keep you guessing until the very end...absolutely fantastic.” - Mary Dube, Frolic "If you're a fan of heartwarming small town romances, do I have a great new book and author for you!!! After spending the weekend discovering Catherine Cowles' writing for the very first time, I walked away knowing I would read every single thing this talented new author ever writes." - Natasha is a Book Junkie "There aren’t enough stars in the world for what this book deserves because Beautifully Broken Pieces deserves every last star in the universe.” - Red Hatter Book Blog *** Perfect for readers of Kristen Ashley, Nora Roberts, and Devney Perry.

You can't keep two people who are meant to be together apart for long . . . Lennon Davis doesn't believe in much, but she does believe in the security of the number five. If she flicks the bedroom light switch five times, maybe her new LA school won't suck. But that doesn't feel right, so she flicks the switch again. And again. Ten more flicks of the switch and maybe her new stepfamily will accept her. Twenty-five more flicks and maybe she won't cause any more of her loved ones to die. Fifty more and then she can finally go to sleep. Kyler Benton witnesses this pattern of lights from the safety of his tree house in the yard next door. It is only there, hidden from the unwanted stares of his peers, that Kyler can fill his notebooks with lyrics that reveal the true scars of the boy behind the oversize hoodies and caustic humor. But Kyler finds that descriptions of blond hair, sad eyes, and tapping fingers are beginning to fill the pages of his notebooks. Lennon, the lonely girl next door his father has warned him about, infiltrates his mind. Even though he has enough to deal with without Lennon's rumored tragic past in his life, Kyler can't help but want to know the truth about his new muse.

“An inspiring, intimate memoir about faith, resilience and the tenacity of love.”—People “In this emotional tale, a young couple see their lives changed in the blink of an eye—and learn to find love again.”—US Weekly Five months pregnant, on a flight to their “babymoon,” Allison Pataki turned to her husband when he asked if his eye looked strange and watched him suddenly lose consciousness. After an emergency landing, she discovered that Dave—a healthy thirty-year-old athlete and surgical resident—had suffered a rare and life-threatening stroke. Next thing Allison knew, she was sitting alone in the ER in Fargo, North Dakota, waiting to hear if her husband would survive the night. When Dave woke up, he could not carry memories from hour to hour, much less from one day to the next. Allison had lost the Dave she knew and loved when he lost consciousness on the plane. Within a few months, she found herself caring for both a newborn and a sick husband, struggling with the fear of what was to come. As a way to make sense of the pain and chaos of their new reality, Allison started to write daily letters to Dave. Not only would she work to make sense of the unfathomable experiences unfolding around her, but her letters would provide Dave with the memories he could not make on his own. She was writing to preserve their past, protect their present, and fight for their future. Those letters became the foundation of this beautiful, intimate memoir. And in the process, she fell in love with her husband all over again. This is a manifesto for living, an ultimately uplifting story about the transformative power of faith and resilience. It’s a tale of a man’s turbulent road to recovery, the shifting nature of marriage, and the struggle of loving through pain and finding joy in the broken places. Praise for Beauty in the Broken Places “Bold and commendable . . . A strength of this memoir is [Allison Pataki’s] scrupulous honesty.”—USA Today “A memoir about . . . determination and gratitude, and the value of putting one foot in front of another during a crisis.”—The Washington Post “Heart-wrenching.”—Women’s Health “Powerful and immersive . . . Pataki delivers an insightful look at how two people faced a life-altering test as a team ‘fighting to make the dreams of our future possible.’”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)