Growing Up Amish


Ira Wagler - 2011
    At seventeen, in the dark of night, he left the religious settlement, but it was only nine years later that he finally left the church for good. His favorite Bible verse is from Psalm 34: "Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart." In this new memoir, he tells what it was like growing up Old World Amish and what it felt like leaving it for a strange new world. Far more than picturesque; Growing Up Amish conveys one man's heartfelt experience.

Becoming Mrs. Lewis


Patti Callahan - 2018
    In a world where women were silenced, she found her voice.From New York Times bestselling author Patti Callahan comes an exquisite novel of Joy Davidman, the woman C. S. Lewis called “my whole world.” When poet and writer Joy Davidman began writing letters to C. S. Lewis—known as Jack—she was looking for spiritual answers, not love. Love, after all, wasn’t holding together her crumbling marriage. Everything about New Yorker Joy seemed ill-matched for an Oxford don and the beloved writer of Narnia, yet their minds bonded over their letters. Embarking on the adventure of her life, Joy traveled from America to England and back again, facing heartbreak and poverty, discovering friendship and faith, and against all odds, finding a love that even the threat of death couldn’t destroy.In this masterful exploration of one of the greatest love stories of modern times, we meet a brilliant writer, a fiercely independent mother, and a passionate woman who changed the life of this respected author and inspired books that still enchant us and change us. Joy lived at a time when women weren’t meant to have a voice—and yet her love for Jack gave them both voices they didn’t know they had.At once a fascinating historical novel and a glimpse into a writer’s life, Becoming Mrs. Lewis is above all a love story—a love of literature and ideas and a love between a husband and wife that, in the end, was not impossible at all.

Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change


Maggie Smith - 2020
    When Maggie Smith, the award-winning author of the viral poem “Good Bones,” started writing daily Twitter posts in the wake of her divorce, they unexpectedly caught fire. In this deeply moving book of quotes and essays, Maggie writes about new beginnings as opportunities for transformation. Like kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending broken ceramics with gold, Keep Moving celebrates the beauty and strength on the other side of loss. This is a book for anyone who has gone through a difficult time and is wondering: What comes next?

This Life I Live: One Man's Extraordinary, Ordinary Life and the Woman Who Changed It Forever


Rory Feek - 2017
    This vibrant and beautiful young woman would soon be on a unique journey for which no one is ever fully prepared. Her husband, Rory, and children, Heidi, Hopie, and Indiana, were beside her each step of the way. Rory, a prolific songwriter, entrepreneur, farmer, and overall tender man, has seen God bless his life in countless unexpected ways and had started a blog, thislifeilive.com, not really knowing its purpose other than he needed to write. That purpose soon became clearer when Joey’s cancer battle hit.By inviting so many into the final months of Joey’s life, this astounding couple captured the hearts of millions with their powerful love story, the manner in which they were handling the diagnosis, and the inspiring simple way they had chosen to live their lives.In this vulnerable book, Rory takes us into his own challenging life story and shows what can happen when God brings both his presence and the right companion into our lives. He also gives never-before-revealed details on what he calls “the long goodbye,” the blessing of being able to know that life is going to end and taking advantage of it. Feek shows how we all are actually there already and how we can learn to live that way every day. He then goes into detail toward the end of the book on what it’s like to try to move on with your life once you’ve “had it all.”

In Bloom: Trading Restless Insecurity for Abiding Confidence


Kayla Aimee - 2018
    Whether fueled by a culture of makeover shows, by the lingering memories of mean girls, or by events much more wounding to the soul, we can become so conditioned by self-doubt that it becomes our inner monologue. What we want is to be free of shame and comparison, to turn our uncertainty into a bold confidence. But to flourish in our own skin, we first have to rewrite the narrative. In this fearless, funny, and refreshingly relatable chronicle of her own metamorphosis from the insecurity that once held her captive, author Kayla Aimee unfolds the blueprint for women to:   • Identify the deep-seated sources of our assumed inadequacy and replace them with steadfast truths of scriptural affirmation • Replace our need for approval with the enduring promise of acceptance • Uncover our purpose, unlock our potential, and celebrate the God-given gifts in our unique personality   To every woman who longs for belonging, this journey through Kayla’s inviting prose, biblical promises, and journaling prompts will help guide her from restless insecurity to a beautiful becoming.

Let Them Eat Pancakes: How I Survived Living in Paris Without Losing My Head


Craig Carlson - 2020
    Despite never having owned his own business before—let alone a restaurant, the riskiest business of all—Craig chose to open his diner in a foreign country, with a foreign language that also happens to be the culinary capital of the world. While facing enormous obstacles, including convincing French banks to give him a loan, finding “exotic” ingredients like bacon, breakfast sausage, and bagels, and dealing with constant strikes, demonstrations, and Kafkaesque French bureaucracy, Craig and his diner, Breakfast in America, went on to be a great success—especially with the French.By turns hilarious and provocative, Craig takes us hunting for snails with his French mother-in-law and their attempts to smuggle them past U.S. Customs. We encounter a customer at his diner who, as a self-proclaimed anarchist, tries to stiff his bill, saying it’s his right to “dine and dash.” We navigate Draconian labor laws where bad employees can’t be fired and overzealous inspecteurs can pop in at any moment and close down your business and battle antiquated French bureaucracy dating back to Napoleon as Craig tries to purchase an over-priced Paris apartment the size of a shoebox. When Craig finds love, this debonair French man makes clear he won’t be satisfied until Craig learns how to properly use a knife and fork.For all those who love stories of adventure, romance, and over-coming the odds, Let Them Eat Pancackes will satisfy your appetite and leave you wanting even more.

Irena's Children: The Extraordinary Story of the Woman Who Saved 2,500 Children from the Warsaw Ghetto


Tilar J. Mazzeo - 2016
    While there, she reached out to the trapped Jewish families, going from door to door and asking the parents to trust her with their young children. She started smuggling them out of the walled district, convincing her friends and neighbors to hide them. Driven to extreme measures and with the help of a network of local tradesmen, ghetto residents, and her star-crossed lover in the Jewish resistance, Irena ultimately smuggled thousands of children past the Nazis. She made dangerous trips through the city’s sewers, hid children in coffins, snuck them under overcoats at checkpoints, and slipped them through secret passages in abandoned buildings.But Irena did something even more astonishing at immense personal risk: she kept secret lists buried in bottles under an old apple tree in a friend’s back garden. On them were the names and true identities of those Jewish children, recorded with the hope that their relatives could find them after the war. She could not have known that more than ninety percent of their families would perish.

Come On Over!: Southern Delicious for Every Day and Every Occasion


Elizabeth Heiskell - 2021
    Her chapters include Weekdays, Party Days, School Days, Summer Days, Beach Days, Game Days, Diet Days, Cheat Days, and Delta Days. In Weekdays, she shares her recipe for The Good Chicken and her Farro and Salmon Bowls, both of which stand up against the rigorous scrutiny of her three daughters. Diet Days includes humorous, tongue-in-cheek recipes like Fat Lady Soup and the Bone Broth recipe that had her local butchers concerned. Game Days includes tailgate favorites, School Days has lunches that can withstand backpack jumbling, and Party Days shows exactly how to impress a house full of guests and avoid pre-party panic. Every page is imbued with Heiskell's bubbly personality and spirit, and the recipes are designed to be easy and fuss-free--and guaranteed to please. Come On Over! will inspire anyone looking to cook every day of the week!

The Man Who Ate Too Much: The Life of James Beard


John Birdsall - 2020
    Enter James Beard, authority on cooking and eating, his larger-than-life presence and collection of whimsical bow ties synonymous with the nation’s food for decades, even after his death in 1985.In the first biography of Beard in twenty-five years, acclaimed writer John Birdsall argues that Beard’s struggles as a closeted gay man directly influenced his creation of an American cuisine. Starting in the 1920s, Beard escaped loneliness and banishment by traveling abroad to places where people ate for pleasure, not utility, and found acceptance at home by crafting an American ethos of food likewise built on passion and delight. Informed by never-before-tapped correspondence and lush with details of a golden age of home cooking, The Man Who Ate Too Much is a commanding portrait of a towering figure who still represents the best in food.

In the Land of Blue Burqas


Kate McCord - 2012
    I learned the rules – I had to.” Riveting and fast paced, In the Land of Blue Burqas  depicts sharing the love and truth of Christ with women living in Afghanistan, which has been called  "the world's most dangerous country in which to be born a woman." These stories are honest and true. The harsh reality of their lives is not sugar-coated, and that adds to the impact of this book. Through storytelling, the author shows how people who don't know Christ come to see Him, His truth, and His beauty. The stories provide insight into how a Jesus-follower brought Jesus' teachings of the Kingdom of God to Afghanistan. They reveal the splendor of Christ, the desire of human hearts, and that precious instance where the two meet.All of the names of those involved—including Kate's—plus the locations have been changed to protect the participants.

The Raging Skillet: The True Life Story of Chef Rossi


Chef Rossi - 2015
    Within the confines of this restrictive culture, Rossi's big city dreams take root. Once she makes her way to Manhattan, Rossi's passion for cooking, which first began as a revolt against the microwave, becomes her life mission.The Raging Skillet is one woman's story of cooking her way through some of the most unlikely kitchens in New York City—at a "beach" in Tribeca, an East Village supper club, and a makeshift grill at ground zero in the days immediately following 9/11. Forever writing her own rules, Rossi ends up becoming the owner of one of the most sought-after catering companies in the city. This heartfelt, gritty, and hilarious memoir shows us how the creativity of the kitchen allows us to give a nod to where we come from, while simultaneously expressing everything that we are. Includes unpretentious recipes for real people everywhere.

Cooking as Fast as I Can: A Chef's Story of Family, Food, and Forgiveness


Cat Cora - 2015
    Her passion for the kitchen started in her home, where she spent her days internalizing the dishes that would form the cornerstone of her cooking philosophy incorporating her Greek heritage and Southern upbringing—from crispy fried chicken and honey-drenched biscuits to spanakopita. But outside the kitchen, Cat’s life was volatile.In Cooking as Fast as I Can, Cat Cora reveals, for the first time, coming-of-age experiences from early childhood sexual abuse to the realities of life as a lesbian in the deep South. She shares how she found her passion in the kitchen and went on to attend the prestigious Culinary Institute of America and apprentice under Michelin star chefs in France. After her big break as a co-host on the Food Network’s Melting Pot, Cat broke barriers by becoming the first-ever female Iron Chef.Cooking as Fast as I Can chronicles the difficulties and triumphs Cora experienced on the path to becoming a chef. She writes movingly about how she found courage and redemption in the dark truths of her past and about how she found solace in the kitchen and work, how her passion for cooking helped her to overcome hardships and ultimately find happiness at home and became a wife and a mother to four boys. Above all, this is an utterly engrossing story about the grit and grace it takes to achieve your dreams.

Unprocessed: My City-Dwelling Year of Reclaiming Real Food


Megan Kimble - 2015
    But she cared about where food came from, how it was made, and what it did to her body: so she decided to go an entire year without eating processed foods. Unprocessed is the narrative of Megan's extraordinary year, in which she milled wheat, extracted salt from the sea, milked a goat, slaughtered a sheep, and more--all while earning an income that fell well below the federal poverty line.What makes a food processed? As Megan would soon realize, the answer to that question went far beyond cutting out snacks and sodas, and became a fascinating journey through America's food system, past and present. She learned how wheat became white; how fresh produce was globalized and animals industrialized. But she also discovered that in daily life, as she attempted to balance her project with a normal social life--which included dating--the question of what made a food processed was inextricably tied to gender and economy, politics and money, work and play.Backed by extensive research and wide-ranging interviews--and including tips on how to ditch processed food and transition to a real-food lifestyle--Unprocessed offers provocative insights not only on the process of food, but also the processes that shape our habits, communities, and day-to-day lives.

The Road to Becoming: Rediscovering Your Life in the Not-How-I-Planned-It Moments


Jenny Simmons - 2014
    There is a moment in all of our lives when leaning into the unknown becomes our only viable pathway forward. This is the moment you must ask, “Do I believe the Storyteller knows better than anyone else my part in the story?” If the answer is yes, pack your bags and get ready to follow God into the unknown.In this vulnerable, laugh-out-loud book, Jenny Simmons shares her own journey through seasons of change and lostness, dead ends and detours, and finally into the terrifying, unknown, God-designed future. The road to becoming is not easy, but it is here you'll begin to discover that new life—life abundant—is always, ever among us. Dancing on the horizon.

A Chance to Die: The Life and Legacy of Amy Carmichael


Elisabeth Elliot - 1987
    There she became known as ''Amma,'' or ''mother,'' as she founded the Dohnavur Fellowship, a refuge for underprivileged children.