Do you think the world is getting better or worse? Is it becoming easier or harder to be a Christian? So many of us fear where things are headed in the culture, the church, and our own lives. But did you know the world is getting better in countless ways? (No, that is not a typo!) What could change if we focused on the good? After almost losing his mother to cancer and wrestling with his own faith, Zach Windahl learned to take whatever life threw at him and chose to be joyful. With vibrant and inspiring storytelling, See the Good will show you not only how but why you should focus on the positive and see the extraordinary in everything around you. Life is hard--there's no denying that. But choosing to put our focus on the good leads to the profound benefits that come from seeing life as an amazing gift from the One who loves us best.

The political emergence of evangelical Christians has been a signal development in America in the past quarter century. And while their voting tendencies have been closely scrutinized, their participation in the policy debates of the day has not. They continue to be caricatured as anti-intellectual Bible thumpers whose views are devoid of reason, logic, or empirical evidence. They're seen as lemmings, following the cues of Dobson and Robertson and marching in lock step with the Republican party on the 'culture wars' issues of abortion, gay rights, and guns. Is The Good Book Good Enough? remedies the neglect of this highly influential group, which makes up as much as a third of the American public. It offers a carefully nuanced and comprehensive portrait of evangelical attitudes on a wide range of policies and their theological underpinnings. Each essay applies an evangelical lens to a contemporary issue - environmentalism, immigration, family and same-sex marriage, race relations, global human rights, foreign policy and national security, social welfare and poverty, and economic policy. The result thoroughly enriches our understanding of evangelicalism as a prism through which many view a wide range of policy debates.

As the obituary writer in a spectacularly beautiful but often dangerous spit of land in Alaska, Heather Lende knows something about last words and lives well lived. Now she’s distilled what she’s learned about how to live a more exhilarating and meaningful life into three words: find the good. It’s that simple--and that hard. Quirky and profound, individual and universal, Find the Good offers up short chapters that help us unlearn the habit--and it is a habit--of seeing only the negatives. Lende reminds us that we can choose to see any event--starting a new job or being laid off from an old one, getting married or getting divorced--as an opportunity to find the good. As she says, “We are all writing our own obituary every day by how we live. The best news is that there’s still time for additions and revisions before it goes to press.” Ever since Algonquin published her first book, the New York Times bestseller If You Lived Here, I’d Know Your Name, Heather Lende has been praised for her storytelling talent and her plainspoken wisdom. The Los Angeles Times called her “part Annie Dillard, part Anne Lamott,” and that comparison has never been more apt as she gives us a fresh, positive perspective from which to view our relationships, our obligations, our priorities, our community, and our world. An antidote to the cynicism and self-centeredness that we are bombarded with every day in the news, in our politics, and even at times in ourselves, Find the Good helps us rediscover what’s right with the world. “Heather Lende’s small town is populated with big hearts--she finds them on the beach, walking her granddaughters, in the stories of ordinary peoples’ lives, and knits them into unforgettable tales. Find the Good is a treasure.” —Jo-Ann Mapson, author of Owen’s Daughter “Find the Good is excellent company in unsteady times . . . Heather Lende is the kind of person you want to sit across the kitchen table from on a rainy afternoon with a bottomless cup of tea. When things go wrong, when things go right, her quiet, commonsense wisdom, self-examining frankness, and good-natured humor offer a chance to reset, renew, rebalance.” —Pam Houston, author of Contents May Have Shifted “With gentle humor and empathy [Lende] introduces a number of people who provide examples of how to live well . . . [Find the Good] is simple yet profound.” —Booklist “In this cynical world, Find the Good is a tonic, a literary wellspring, which will continue to run, and nurture, even in times of drought. What a brave and beautiful thing Heather Lende has made with this book.” —John Straley, Shamus Award winner and former writer laureate of Alaska “Heather Lende is a terrific writer and terrific company: intimate, authentic, and as quirky as any of her subjects.” —Marilyn Johnson, author of The Dead Beat

So many of us feel lost. We don't know where to turn. We don't trust ourselves or those around us. We're destabilized by uncertainty. We feel disappointed, disoriented, and disillusioned. We're overwhelmed. We lean too easily on fear instead of faith. There's a reason for that. It's because we don't know how to cope with Change. But Change is the very definition of what it means to live because life is experienced only through Change. So what happens when we resist, defy, or avoid Change? We interrupt the natural order and create disorder in our lives. The very fabric of our reality is imbued with Change. When we defy it, we defy ourselves. We lose our way. This process unfolds simply and predictably over time: Change appears in the form of something unforeseen. We feel uncertain, anxious, frustrated, worried, and fearful at this unexpected turn of events. We resist Change by creating stories of how we think things should've turned out. Our stories cause us to suffer because they are incongruent with reality. Suffering is disorienting and makes us give up our power of free will. When we feel powerless to choose, we abandon ourselves and feel lost. Change can be scary to experience, difficult to process, and harder yet to accept. But it's also the law of life. Whether it's a brutal breakup, a devastating death, a jarring job loss, a debilitating diagnosis, or a perilous pandemic; Change has a way of breaking open our hearts for something bigger, better, and more beautiful to enter our lives. But only if we know how to converse with it. In this thought-provoking self-help debut, Rackliffe shows you how to not just embrace Change, but completely transform your relationship with it--diving deep into the four steps of his RACE Model for Change: 1. Resist one thing only: Your resistance to Change. 2. Accept what you cannot Change so you may let go. 3. Choose to Change what you can by reclaiming your power to choose. 4. Embrace Change by remaining open to it in the future. This is how you find your way back to your true self when you feel lost. First, you stop identifying with the pain of your past. You quit telling yourself stories about how horrific or painful it was. You refuse to be a victim any longer. Next, you embrace your path of highest good in the present. This means using the light of your awareness to make more conscious choices that will support and nourish you, that will help you accept your opportunities to grow. The final step is to stop resisting Change in the future. When something unexpected happens that triggers you, do not react. Learn to lean on your faith. Trust that what happens is for your ultimate benefit even if you can't fathom how. Accept every unforeseen plot twist and embrace every perceived obstacle as an impetus to evolve. This is what it means to heal. This is what it means to find peace. This is what it means to truly live. As Rackliffe writes in the opening pages: "You've been guided to this book for a reason. If you've been looking for a sign, wishing for clarity, or hoping for direction, this is it. Your life is speaking to you through the words on these pages. Should you choose to listen, you will rediscover the truth of who you are. Should you accept this assignment, you will awaken the parts of you that you thought were lost forever. A homecoming of the soul awaits those who are brave enough to choose this path. All you have to do is give yourself permission to embrace it." From the pain of resistance to the peace of acceptance, and from the power of choosing to the bliss of being open to life, this is a voyage of resilience and redemption, fear and forgiveness, judgment and joy. Follow the RACE model for Change and you will always find your way back home to you. Choose to embark on this journey and you will learn to befriend Change. Choose the path of highest good laid out for you and you will finally be able to say, "It's Good to See Me Again."

'Loveday's case is that the mantle of historical truth and divine authority has placed upon the Bible an intolerable weight, crushing it as a creative work of immense imaginative and inspirational power. His argument is both fascinating and persuasive.' Matthew Parris The Bible for Grown-Ups neither requires, nor rejects, belief. It sets out to help intelligent adults make sense of the Bible – a book that is too large to swallow whole, yet too important in our history and culture to spit out. Why do the creation stories in Genesis contradict each other? Did the Exodus really happen? Was King David a historical figure? Why is Matthew's account of the birth of Jesus so different from Luke's? Why was St Paul so rude about St Peter? Every Biblical author wrote for their own time, and their own audience. In short, nothing in the Bible is quite what it seems. Literary critic Simon Loveday's book – a labour of love that has taken over a decade to write – is a thrilling read, for Christians and anyone else, which will overturn everything you thought you knew about the Good Book.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of The Constant Rabbit comes “Harry Potter just for adults . . . [an] immensely enjoyable, almost compulsive experience” (The New York Times Book Review)—the second novel in the renowned Thursday Next series. “[Lost in a Good Book] is satire, fantasy, literary criticism, thriller, whodunit, game, puzzle, joke, postmodern prank, and tilt-a-whirl.”—The Washington Post If resourceful, fearless literary detective Thursday Next thought she could avoid the spotlight after her heroic escapades in the pages of Jane Eyre, she was sorely mistaken. Her adventures as a renowned Special Operative in literary detection have left Thursday Next yearning for a rest. But when the love of her life is eradicated by the corrupt multinational Goliath Corporation, Thursday must bite the bullet and moonlight as a Prose Resource Operative in the secret world of Jurisfiction, the police force inside the books. There she is apprenticed to Miss Havisham, the famous man-hater from Dickens’s Great Expectations, who teaches her to book-jump like a pro. If Thursday retrieves a supposedly vanquished enemy from the pages of Poe’s “The Raven,” she thinks Goliath might return her lost love, Landen. But her latest mission is endlessly complicated. Not only are there side trips into the works of Kafka and Austen, and even Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Flopsy Bunnies, Thursday finds herself the target of a series of potentially lethal coincidences, the authenticator of a newly discovered play by the Bard himself, and the only one who can prevent an unidentifiable pink sludge from engulfing all life on Earth. Don’t miss any of Jasper Fforde’s delightfully entertaining Thursday Next novels: THE EYRE AFFAIR • LOST IN A GOOD BOOK • THE WELL OF LOST PLOTS • SOMETHING ROTTEN • FIRST AMONG SEQUELS • ONE OF OUR THURSDAYS IS MISSING • THE WOMAN WHO DIED A LOT

A little boy has a series of adventures and misadventures with a bunch of wild animals.