The Map Across Time #2 in The Gates of Heaven series by C.S. Lakin Fairy tales can come true…it can happen to you…if you’re young at heart . . . Oh, so fun to be young at heart again and plunge into a saga from “once upon a time,” where characters can follow magical maps, put their feet into glowing impressions, travel back and forth in time, and take advice from talking pigs. Equally enjoyable is relating to the plot as the characters learn, grow, and make personal sacrifices so others can become what they were created to be—sort of…
February 2011 Review – Voyage of Promise
Voyage of Promise Grace in Africa Series – #2 By Kay Marshall Strom History matters. Not just the dates and the what-happened facts. Not just the famous names who made their marks on important documents. Ordinary people also contributed to our history—people who saw the need for change, who stood for justice when it wasn’t popular to do so, who never gave up the cause for freedom. Kay Marshall Strom draws wonderful word pictures of people like these in her Grace in Africa series. Yes, of course her characters are fictional—but they are born out of painstaking research, out of…
January 2011 Reviews
The Voice New Testament Published by Thomas Nelson The list of minds and talents behind this new rendition of the New Testament is impressive, as is the intent of their approach: to present the Bible in a user-friendly format, unencumbered by extraneous dialog tags and vocabulary specific to religion and theology. The hope was to make the scriptures “sing” to the reader and communicate the thread of “Jesus, the Liberating King” throughout. I tried three or four times to become involved with this “retelling” of the biblical story. But I was unsuccessful. For me, a lifelong student of the Bible…
September Review – OUTLIVE YOUR LIFE
Outlive Your Life by Max Lucado Thomas Nelson Publishers 2010 The subtitle of Max Lucado’s newest book Outlive Your Life says it all: “You were made to make a difference.” This has been my personal mission message for the past ten years after God unexpectedly sent me to Russia to teach the Bible. But, what better venue for proclaiming this message than the book of Acts—the story of the movement of the Holy Spirit on the apostles and the launch of the early Christian church. Max weaves the reader into the fabric of the lives of the people in Acts…
August 2010 reviews
Someone to Blame by C.S. Lakin Zondervan – October 2010 (Advance reading copy) Small towns have big problems—or so it seems—when a shifty-eyed drifter moves into Breakers, California about the same time as the Moore family, what’s left of them anyway. Matt, Irene, and Casey need a new beginning, but moving to Breakers comes with its own brand of pain and mystery. Thefts, fires, vandalism—who is to blame? The fill-in sheriff can’t seem to get a handle on it. The town’s new pastor doesn’t have any answers. The locals start pointing fingers. The Moores aren’t finding the peace they were…
