Literature & Fiction Books - Page 2

Rebecca's Reward (Daughters of Blessing #4)

Lauraine Snelling

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Very good for the most part 4 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

NOTE: The review on the Amazon webpage is clearly NOT about this book, there is no "Thomas Ollenburger" or any other Mennonite characters, nor does any part of the story take place in Kansas or Boston.

Now for the real plot: Rebecca Baard wants to start an ice cream/soda shop in the town of Blessing, but her brother thinks it's nothing but a foolish dream. She travels to Bismarck to visit her cousin Penny and has the chance to visit an ice cream parlor and learn how to run it, and meets a nice young man after a skating mishap - he encourages her to stay in Bismarck longer but she insists on returning to Blessing as planned. Upon her return to Blessing, she is shocked to learn that Mr. Jeffers, the despicable new owner of Penny's former store in Blessing, has been telling everyone that he and Rebecca are engaged because her brothers gave him permission to court her. The brothers refuse to take responsibility for their actions and force her to confront Mr. Jeffries to say she's not interested, but he turns on her (thankfully, a friend hears Rebecca scream and stops him in time). Most of her family and friends know it's not Rebecca's fault and are ready to defender her, but Mrs. Valders, the town gossip, tries to put all the blame on her.

My favorite parts of this story is are Mrs. Valders' adopted son Gerald, who dislikes confrontation, willingly stands up to his mother after she publicly declares falsehoods about Rebecca, and Gerald's brother Toby, previously the school bully, is instrumental in making everything work out right in the end.

Editorial Review:

Nineteen-year-old Rebecca Baard has experienced more than her share of sorrow, and now she is afraid to open her heart to love. Besides, no man has ever shown enough interest in her to come courting. So Rebecca's friends set out to remedy the situation, concocting social events to attract all the eligible bachelors in Blessing and advising her in the use of feminine wiles. When none of these efforts seem to work, Rebecca tries yet another tack, only to discover that even the best of intentions can't keep events from taking a surprising turn.

Will Rebecca overcome her fears, or will she settle for something less than love?

Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana (Christ the Lord)

Anne Rice

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 66 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Anne Rice’s second book in her hugely ambitious and courageous life of Christ begins during his last winter before his baptism in the Jordan and concludes with the miracle at Cana.

It is a novel in which we see Jesus—he is called Yeshua bar Joseph—during a winter of no rain, endless dust, and talk of trouble in Judea.

Legends of a Virgin birth have long surrounded Yeshua, yet for decades he has lived as one among many who come to the synagogue on the Sabbath. All who know and love him find themselves waiting for some sign of the path he will eventually take.

And at last we see him emerge from his baptism to confront his destiny—and the Devil. We see what happens when he takes the water of six great limestone jars, transforms it into cool red wine, is recognized as the anointed one, and urged to call all Israel to take up arms against Rome and follow him as the prophets have foretold.

As with Out of Egypt, the opening novel, The Road to Cana is based on the Gospels and on the most respected New Testament scholarship. The book’s power derives from the profound feeling its author brings to the writing and the way in which she summons up the presence of Jesus.

The Great Divorce

C. S. Lewis

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 221 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

One way ride to forever 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

With each and every book I read by C.S. Lewis, I become an ever more admiring fan. While I cannot say this is my favorite of his works (for that spot, I reserve "Mere Christianity," followed by "A Grief Observed"), it is as fascinating and insightful a ride as any of his. C. S. Lewis is exceptional in his ability to take the most complicated human issues and make them understandable.

Blending into a queu awaiting a bus ride without fully understanding to where or why (how many of us blend sheepishly with the masses this way?), the narrator, George, takes a fantastical ride through heaven and hell. Just two possible end points on this trip, and with that, Lewis makes it clear: as much as we try to rationalize and wiggle, there is no gray area in life, or, in this case, the after life. You choose. Black or white, good or evil.

With a cast of colorful characters, ghostly figures and helpful angels who only wish to give the undecided one final chance to decide, we ride along with those who, we soon realize, resemble everyone we know. Including you and me. The whiner and the complainer, the cheater and the liar, the rationalizer, the egotist, the shortchanger. Even the overly devoted mother, who, upon closer examination, clings to her son more to serve her own selfish needs than to let him go in a loving manner for his wellbeing is not the marytr she believes herself to be.

It is not in the big falls that we lose our way to heaven. It is, more often than not, in the petty details of our lives, all those grand intentions come to nothing, all those shortcomings and shortcuts taken, all those more challenging routes avoided, where we take wrong turns that will land us only in hell. A stern Father reminds us, "Your will be done," rather than His. And so, for all who did not trust in Him, but stubbornly held to their own willful ways, the bus has only one last stop.

As amusing as this little tale (novella) is to read, the message is heavy duty. If you don't recognize yourself in at least a few of these lost souls, look harder. And then give your future bus stop some careful thought...

Editorial Review:

The Great Divorce is C.S. Lewis's Divine Comedy: the narrator bears strong resemblance to Lewis (by way of Dante); his Virgil is the fantasy writer George MacDonald; and upon boarding a bus in a nondescript neighborhood, the narrator is taken to Heaven and Hell. The book's primary message is presented with almost oblique tidiness--"There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.'" However, the narrator's descriptions of sin and temptation will hit quite close to home for many readers. Lewis has a genius for describing the intricacies of vanity and self-deception, and this book is tremendously persistent in forcing its reader to consider the ultimate consequences of everyday pettiness. --Michael Joseph Gross

The Copper Scroll (Political Thrillers Series #4)

Joel C. Rosenberg

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 98 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

To the point of no return... 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

is how I think Joel writes his books. I love authors who write how they feel and how the story goes. In his 3rd book I was pretty shocked to see that, yeah, the Battle of Gog and Magog DID happen and changed the world... forever! This one is no different with the finding of the scrolls, the treasure, and the Ark. THAT was a shock!!

This book has the classis Joel fast action, the classic Joel in-detail research, the classic Joel end of the world storyline. I'm telling you that if you haven't read this series you are really missing something special. I'm going to wait a bit on 'Dead Heat' because I don't want to finish this series just yet.

Editorial Review:

Saddam is gone, Arafat is dead, and a new Iraq is rising. But when a suicide bomber strikes Washington and assassinations unfold from London to Los Angeles, Jon Bennett and Erin McCoy are drawn back into a world of terror they thought was over. At the heart of the mystery lies a 2,000-year-old scroll describing unimaginable treasures that could lead to the Third Jewish Temple. Some call it history's greatest treasure map. Others call it a road map to Armageddon. But the time to find the truth is running out fast.

A Grief Observed

C. S. Lewis

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 134 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

C.S. Lewis joined the human race when his wife, Joy Gresham, died of cancer. Lewis, the Oxford don whose Christian apologetics make it seem like he's got an answer for everything, experienced crushing doubt for the first time after his wife's tragic death. A Grief Observed contains his epigrammatic reflections on that period: "Your bid--for God or no God, for a good God or the Cosmic Sadist, for eternal life or nonentity--will not be serious if nothing much is staked on it. And you will never discover how serious it was until the stakes are raised horribly high," Lewis writes. "Nothing will shake a man--or at any rate a man like me--out of his merely verbal thinking and his merely notional beliefs. He has to be knocked silly before he comes to his senses. Only torture will bring out the truth. Only under torture does he discover it himself." This is the book that inspired the film Shadowlands, but it is more wrenching, more revelatory, and more real than the movie. It is a beautiful and unflinchingly honest record of how even a stalwart believer can lose all sense of meaning in the universe, and how he can gradually regain his bearings. --Michael Joseph Gross

On a Whim (The Katie Weldon Series #2)

Robin Jones Gunn

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Another Winner for Gunn! 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I have been eagerly awaiting this book to be released and I read it all in one afternoon. I just couldn't put it down! This book is full of surprises, and it has left my heart screaming, "more please!"

I cannot wait for the next installment in this lovely series!

Editorial Review:

As she heads toward college graduation, Katie’s life begins to change and she must decide what to hold on to and what to let go of. The second book in the Katie Weldon series renews the bond between Katie, Christy, Todd, and Rick as they embrace adulthood.

Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth's Last Days (Left Behind No. 1)

Tim LaHaye, Jerry B. Jenkins

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2213 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Piloting his 747, Rayford Steele is musing about his wife Irene's irritating religiosity and contemplating the charms of his "drop-dead gorgeous" flight attendant, Hattie. First Irene was into Amway, then Tupperware, and now it's the Rapture of the Saints--the scary last story in the Bible in which Christians are swept to heaven and unbelievers are left behind to endure the Antichrist's Tribulation. Steele believes he'll put the plane on autopilot and go visit Hattie. But Hattie's in a panic: some of the passengers have disappeared! The Rapture has happened, abruptly driverless cars are crashing all over, and the slick, sinister Romanian Nicolae Carpathia plans to use the UN to establish one world government and religion. Resembling "a young Robert Redford" and silver-tongued in nine languages, Carpathia is named People's "Sexiest Man Alive." (This reviewer, a former People writer, finds this plot twist plausible.) Meanwhile, Steele teams up with Buck Williams, a buck-the-system newshound, to form the Tribulation Force, an underground of left-behind penitents battling the Antichrist.

Ex-presidential candidate Pat Robertson briefly outsold Michael Crichton with his apocalypse novel The End of the Age (now available on audiocassette), and the similar The Third Millennium sells well, but the Left Behind series is the absolute champion in the race to make the Book of Revelation into racy thriller reading. --Tim Appelo

Every Now and Then (September 11 Series #3)

Karen Kingsbury

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Editorial Review:

A gripping story of danger and heroism by New York Times bestselling author Karen Kingsbury. Sheriff’s deputy Alex Brady and his K-9 partner Bo, are on a mission to protect the people of Los Angeles. Domestic terrorists are trying to make this the worst fire season in California’s history. Can Alex stop this senseless destruction in time, or will he lose himself in the process?

Jessie (Big Sky Dreams #3)

Lori Wick

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

It's like she just gave up 2 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

At about half way through I can tell you that the story is good and fun and intriguing. But the writing is irritating. Much as I said when I reviewed Sabrina by Lori Wick, the word usage is just awkward and causes a break in concentration and overall is ruining the book. I just do not understand it either, because I have read dozens of her books and never have found this in the before Sabrina and now Jessie. It is just weird, it is the same usage of "that" in all of the weirdest places. You might have to see it, to understand what I'm talking about but it is just weird.



After being completely finished, my overall opinion is that I'm disappointed. The story has so much potential and is really pretty good, but then it just ends completely abruptly. Then most of the loose ends are wrapped up in a whirl wind in the epilogue. The usage of "that" is just odd through out, but even beyond that, I do not know it just was not the best of Lori Wick that I have read. I am not saying do not read it, because it has tons of wonderful gospel lessons and heart warming plots, there is just a strangeness to the wording and then just ending. It could have been better, but it is still an okay read.

Editorial Review:

Jessie is book three in bestselling author Lori Wick’s popular new Big Sky Dreams series (more than 215,000 copies sold). Readers will be transported to the vast landscape of Montana Territory in the late 1800s where they meet Jessie Wheeler, whose husband, Seth, abandoned her before their second child was born. As a single mom and the sole proprietor of Token Creek’s general store, Jessie lives day to day with her hands full and her heart broken.

When Seth suddenly returns to town claiming he’s a man changed by faith, Jessie is reluctant to trust him or God with her family’s future. But Seth sets out to prove his commitment and his love. This is a timeless story of the transforming power of God’s love and forgiveness.

The Canterbury Tales (Penguin Classics)

Geoffrey Chaucer

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 30 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Too bad I bought this book. 2 out of 5 stars.
1 of 46 people found this review helpful.

I find it very unfortunate that I wasted my money on this book when I could have read the entire story on the Internet. Of course, the story is out of copyright, and you'll find it all over the Internet, in complete.

Don't waste your money like I did. Even worse, I never even read the book.

My rating is only on the size of the book, because like I said, I never read it, and I am forced to issue a rating (I only wanted to enter a comment).

The Hobo Philosopher 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I suppose that any freshman college student has read some of these Tales. I had a professor who read a few of them to us in the Olde English. It was really fun and you really got a grasp of where the English language was coming from - and poetry.
I went on from my English class and read the whole works. They are good, classic short stories. You are really going back to the basics here. The stories are all easy to read and are about the everyday type people and their everyday lives. You get classic English literature, history, short story writing techniques, and the roots of the English language all in one medium sized book. Can't beat it. It's a bargain.

Editorial Review:

With their astonishing diversity of tone and subject matter, The Canterbury Tales have become one of the touchstones of medieval literature.

Translated here into modern English, these tales of a motley crowd of pilgrims drawn from all walks of life-from knight to nun, miller to monk-reveal a picture of English life in the fourteenth century that is as robust as it is representative.

Translated by Nevill Coghill