Ruth Haley Barton’s refreshing "Invitation to Retreat" gives guidance to Christians longing for more time with God. Modern life is harried, to say the least. Yet people resist taking advantage of retreats because of misconceptions... Read More

By turns quirky, touching, amusing, and sad, Inside the World: As Al Lehman is an intellectual achievement that rivals some of the best literary fiction of the last half century. Marvin Cohen’s biography of the fictional Al Lehman,... Read More

Taylor makes alternative approaches to personal well-being seem easy, interesting, and fun. A traumatic childhood with a father who went into rages and denigrated her; teen years self-medicating with drugs, alcohol, pills, and risky... Read More

Hanif Kureishi’s "The Nothing" is a darkly humorous and slightly pornographic story about three extremely self-centered individuals entrenched in an odd, triangular affair. A retired and terminally ill filmmaker, Waldo, has suspicions... Read More

In Hunter’s poetic post-apocalyptic novel, meditations on what has been lost are heartrending in their clarity. Poetic and succinct, Megan Hunter’s "The End We Start From" is an etiological exercise for a climate-changed world—a... Read More

"The Order" offers an engaging and original story that is well conceived and artfully rendered. Lynn Chase’s "The Order" is an ambitious and complex Christian thriller. The plot involves the archangel Gabriel and numerous other members... Read More

Spiritual quests in the sky tie together the stories in LeGras’s emotionally powerful collection. Christopher LeGras debuts with "Weather to Fly", a story collection that can be read as a novel. The narrative constant is a love of... Read More

This wildly imaginative cultural takedown of Illinois history delivers an extraordinary lesson in humanism, animal stewardship, and inner rage. Very, very few poets have Gabriel Gudding’s intellectual chops, and his wordplay... Read More