Every woman needs a little jump start in life. Donna Partow knows how to make it happen. In Becoming the Woman God Wants Me to Be, author Donna Partow shows women how to reenergize their lives in 90 days. She covers everything from faith and family to fitness and fashion (with lots more) in this comprehensive plan for greater vitality in life and intimacy with God. This in-depth study of Proverbs 31:10-31 will make women feel in control and on top of things as they study and even memorize that famous passage about the ideal woman of God. This positive, life-affirming book includes a leader's guide, making it perfect for small group use.

Acclaimed R&B singer Bettye LaVette celebrates her storied career in show business in this compelling memoir. As a teenager in Detroit, Bettye LaVette had a hit single with “My Man—He’s a Lovin’ Man.” By the time she was twenty, she had faded back into obscurity and was barely surviving in New York City. For the next forty years, despite being associated with legends such as Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye, and James Brown, she remained relatively unknown outside a circle of devoted fans. Every time it seemed that her dream of stepping into the spotlight was finally coming true, bad luck smashed her hopes, again and again. Then, after a lifetime of singing in clubs and lounges, her unforgettable televised performances at the 2008 Kennedy Center Honors and at President Obama’s pre-Inaugural Concert at the Lincoln Memorial in 2009 won her the recognition she had sought for her entire life. Bettye LaVette’s career has been a one-of-a-kind roller-coaster ride through the world of music; it has taken her from the peaks to the pits and back. In this unflinchingly honest memoir, she boldly recounts her freewheeling childhood—her parents ran an illegal liquor business out of their living room, which was frequented by some of the top acts of the forties and fifties—her short-lived conquest of the R&B world in the 1960s, her decline into poverty and despair, and her recent comeback and career revival, with two Grammy-nominated CDs and numerous appearances on major television talk shows. Poignant, brazen, and fearless, A Woman Like Me is a tour de force from one of the most outspoken female performers singing today—and she’s a force to be reckoned with.

“In order to learn what it means to be a woman, we must start with the One who made her.” Working from Scripture, well-known speaker and author Elisabeth Elliot shares her observations and experiences in a number of essays on what it means to be a Christian woman, whether single, married, or widowed. Available in trade softcover and as a Living Book.

'Text me when you get home.' After joyful nights out together, female friends say this to one another as a way of cementing their love. It's about safety but, more than that, it's about solidarity. A validation of female friendship unlike any that's ever existed before, Text Me When You Get Home is a mix of historical research, the author's own personal experience, and conversations about friendships with women across the country. Everything Schaefer uncovers reveals that these ties are making us, both as individuals and as society as a whole, stronger than ever before.

New York Times Bestseller. With just the right mixture of humor and insight, compassion and incredulity, A Year of Biblical Womanhood is an exercise in scriptural exploration and spiritual contemplation. What does God truly expect of women, and is there really a prescription for biblical womanhood? Come along with Evans as she looks for answers in the rich heritage of biblical heroines, models of grace, and all-around women of valor. What is "biblical womanhood" . . . really? Strong-willed and independent, Rachel Held Evans couldn't sew a button on a blouse before she embarked on a radical life experiment--a year of biblical womanhood. Intrigued by the traditionalist resurgence that led many of her friends to abandon their careers to assume traditional gender roles in the home, Evans decides to try it for herself, vowing to take all of the Bible's instructions for women as literally as possible for a year. Pursuing a different virtue each month, Evans learns the hard way that her quest for biblical womanhood requires more than a "gentle and quiet spirit" (1 Peter 3:4). It means growing out her hair, making her own clothes, covering her head, obeying her husband, rising before dawn, abstaining from gossip, remaining silent in church, and even camping out in the front yard during her period. See what happens when a thoroughly modern woman starts referring to her husband as "master" and "praises him at the city gate" with a homemade sign. Learn the insights she receives from an ongoing correspondence with an Orthodox Jewish woman, and find out what she discovers from her exchanges with a polygamist wife. Join her as she wrestles with difficult passages of scripture that portray misogyny and violence against women.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER What do you do when God’s timing seems questionable, his lack of intervention hurtful, and his promises doubtful? Lysa TerKeurst unveils her heart amid shattering circumstances, inviting you to live assured when life doesn't turn out like you expected. Life often looks so very different than we hoped or expected. Some events may simply catch us off guard for a season, but others shatter us completely. We feel disappointed and disillusioned at best and overwhelmed and hopeless at worst. We quietly start to wonder about the reality of God’s goodness and why he allows us to suffer and experience grief and loss. Lysa TerKeurst understands this deeply. But after many tears, godly counseling, and prayerful seeking, she's also discovered that our disappointments can be the divine appointments our souls need to radically encounter God. In It's Not Supposed to Be This Way, Lysa invites us into her own journey of faith and, with grit, vulnerability, and honest humor, helps us to: Stop being pulled into the anxiety of disappointment by discovering how to better process unmet expectations and other painful situations. Train ourselves to recognize the three strategies of the enemy, so we can stand strong and persevere through unsettling relationships and uncertain outcomes. Discover the secret of being steadfast and not panicking when God actually does give us more than we can handle. Shift our suspicion that God is cruel or unfair to the biblical assurance that God is protecting and preparing us. Know how to encourage a friend and help her navigate hard realities with real help from God's truth, the Bible. Look for additional biblically based resources and devotionals from Lysa: Good Boundaries and Goodbyes Forgiving What You Can't Forget Uninvited You're Going to Make It Embraced Seeing Beautiful Again

The brain is a fearsomely complex information-processing environment--one that often eludes our ability to understand it. At any given time, the brain is collecting, filtering, and analyzing information and, in response, performing countless intricate processes, some of which are automatic, some voluntary, some conscious, and some unconscious.Cognitive neuroscience is one of the ways we have to understand the workings of our minds. It's the study of the brain biology behind our mental functions: a collection of methods--like brain scanning and computational modeling--combined with a way of looking at psychological phenomena and discovering where, why, and how the brain makes them happen.Want to know more? Mind Hacks is a collection of probes into the moment-by-moment works of the brain. Using cognitive neuroscience, these experiments, tricks, and tips related to vision, motor skills, attention, cognition, subliminal perception, and more throw light on how the human brain works. Each hack examines specific operations of the brain. By seeing how the brain responds, we pick up clues about the architecture and design of the brain, learning a little bit more about how the brain is put together.Mind Hacks begins your exploration of the mind with a look inside the brain itself, using hacks such as "Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation: Turn On and Off Bits of the Brain" and "Tour the Cortex and the Four Lobes." Also among the 100 hacks in this book, you'll find: Release Eye Fixations for Faster Reactions See Movement When All is Still Feel the Presence and Loss of Attention Detect Sounds on the Margins of Certainty Mold Your Body Schema Test Your Handedness See a Person in Moving Lights Make Events Understandable as Cause-and-Effect Boost Memory by Using Context Understand Detail and the Limits of Attention Steven Johnson, author of "Mind Wide Open" writes in his foreword to the book, "These hacks amaze because they reveal the brain's hidden logic; they shed light on the cheats and shortcuts and latent assumptions our brains make about the world." If you want to know more about what's going on in your head, then Mind Hacks is the key--let yourself play with the interface between you and the world.