Lay It Down: Living in the Freedom of the Gospel by Bill Tell

★★★★★

There’s good news for the weary.

Call it burnout, a spiritual breakdown, or a personal crisis, the toll of Bill Tell’s decades of successful ministry finally caught up with him. Incapacitated and depressed, he found that the road to recovery began at the cross. To his delight, healing opened new freedoms as he embraced the gospel in new ways.

Lay It Down: Living in the Freedom of the Gospel is a bold declaration of the overwhelming grace of God. More than merely saving us in our sin, by grace God delivers us from it, making us new creations and treating us accordingly – no matter what. For a generation of Christians who have learned a gospel of performance and striving, Lay It Down offers the good news of the grace that is already ours in Christ.

In Lay It Down: Living in the Freedom of the Gospel, Bill Tell writes out of his personal experiences in understanding the freedom the grace of God offers. And still, his book speaks with relevance to any Christian reader stuck in performance-based beliefs. With a lot of Scriptural insight and reminders of the freedom of the Gospel, Lay It Down offers a beneficial read - one I found quite helpful and powerful. I would have no problem recommending to other readers.

Thanks to Tyndale BlogNetwork, I received a copy of Lay It Down and the opportunity to provide an honest review. I was not required to write a positive review, and all the opinions I have expressed are my own.

A Cup of Dust by Susie Finkbeiner

★★★★★

Where you come from isn’t who you are.

Ten-year-old Pearl Spence is a daydreamer, playing make-believe to escape life in Oklahoma’s Dust Bowl in 1935. The Spences have their share of misfortune, but as the sheriff’s family, they’ve got more than most in this dry, desolate place. They’re who the town turns to when there’s a crisis or a need – and during these desperate times, there are plenty of both, even if half the town stands empty as people have packed up and moved on.

Pearl is proud of her loving, strong family, though she often wearies of tracking down her mentally impaired older sister or wrestling with her grandmother’s unshakable belief in a God who Pearl just isn’t sure she likes.

Then a mysterious man bent on revenge tramps into her town of Red River. Eddie is dangerous and he seems fixated on Pearl. When he reveals why he’s really there and shares a shocking secret involving the whole town, dust won’t be the only thing darkening Pearl’s world.

While the tone is suspenseful and often poignant, the subtle humor of Pearl’s voice keeps A Cup of Dust from becoming heavy-handed. Finkbeiner deftly paints a story of a family unit coming together despite fractures of distress threatening to pull them apart.

A Cup of Dust tells the heartfelt coming-of-age story of ten-year-old Pearl Spence, living in the midst of Oklahoma’s Dust Bowl. Author Susie Finkbeiner writes this stunning, dramatic historical novel with realistic characters and vivid descriptions and authentically conveys the experience of the time and place. From the start, I was captivated by Finkbeiner’s novel and couldn’t put it down. It’s a fascinating read and any fan of historical fiction should not hesitate to pick up A Cup of Dust - it’s well worth the read and I would definitely recommend it.

Thanks to Kregel Publications, I received a copy of A Cup of Dust and the opportunity to provide an honest review. I was not required to write a positive review, and all the opinions I have expressed are my own.

Christmas on Candy Cane Lane by Sheila Roberts

About the Book

★★★★★

Everyone’s getting ready for Christmas in Icicle Falls, especially on Candy Cane Lane, where holiday decorating is taken very seriously. Tilda Morrison, town cop, is looking forward to celebrating Christmas in her first house…until she discovers that she’s expected to “keep up” with the neighbors, including Maddy Donaldson, the inspiration behind the whole extravaganza. But this year, someone’s destroying Maddie’s precious candy canes! Thank goodness for the cop in their neighborhood.

Tilda already has her hands full trying to sort out her love life and fix up her fixer-upper. Oh, and won’t it be fun to have the family over for Christmas dinner? Not really… Then there’s her neighbor, Ivy Bohn. As a newly single mom, Ivy can sum up the holiday in two words: Bah, humbug. But she’s determined to give her kids a perfect Christmas.

Despite family disasters, irritating ex-husbands and kitchen catastrophes, these three women are going to find out that Christmas really is the most wonderful time of the year!

The eighth book of Sheila Roberts’ Life in Icicle Falls, Christmas on Candy Cane Lane offers a heartwarming read for series’ long-time fans and newcomers alike. This book focuses on three women in Icicle Falls during the hectic holiday season. As each figures out complications of love, neighbors, and holiday spirit, I found myself alternating between smiling, groaning, and wanting to knock some sense into the characters (like I did in my previous trip to Icicle Falls, The Tea Shop on Lavender Lane) and enjoyed every bit of it. All in all, Christmas on Candy Cane Lane tells a delightful story for the upcoming holiday season, and readers of contemporary romance will not want to miss this return to Icicle Falls.

Thanks to Pump Up Your Book, I received a copy of Christmas on Candy Cane Lane and the opportunity to provide an honest review. I was not required to write a positive review, and all the opinions I have expressed are my own.

§  Christmas on Candy Cane Lane is available at Amazon.

§  Discuss this book at PUYB Virtual Book Club at Goodreads.

About the Author

Sheila Roberts lives on a lake in the Pacific Northwest. She’s happily married and has three children. She’s been writing since 1989, but she did lots of things before settling in to her writing career, including owning a singing telegram company and playing in a band. Her band days are over, but she still enjoys writing songs. Sheila’s books are best sellers and often appear as Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. Her novel Angel Lane was named one of Amazon’s top ten romances in 2009. Her novel On Strike for Christmas was a Lifetime Network movie and her novel The Nine Lives of Christmas is now a Hallmark movie, scheduled to air November 8th.

When she’s not speaking to women’s groups or at conferences or hanging out with her girlfriends she can be found writing about those things near and dear to women’s hearts: family, friends, and chocolate.

§  Visit Sheila Roberts’ website.

§  Connect with Sheila on Facebook and Twitter.
§  Visit Sheila’s blog.

Waiting on Wednesday: Until the Dawn

Hosted weekly by Breaking the Spine 
to spotlight eagerly-anticipated upcoming releases.

Title: Until the Dawn

Author: Elizabeth Camden

Publisher: Bethany House

Expected Publication Date: 1 December 2015

A volunteer for the newly established Weather Bureau, Sophie van Riijn needs access to the highest spot in her village to report the most accurate readings. Fascinated by Dierenpark, an abandoned mansion high atop a windswept cliff in the Hudson River Valley, Sophie knows no better option despite a lack of permission from the absent owners.

The first Vandermark to return to the area in sixty years, Quentin intends to put an end to the shadowy rumors about the property that has brought nothing but trouble upon his family. Ready to tear down the mansion, he is furious to discover a local woman has been trespassing on his land.

Instantly at odds, Quentin and Sophie find common ground when she is the only one who can reach his troubled son. There's a light within Sophie that Quentin has never known, and a small spark of the hope that left him years ago begins to grow. But when the secrets of Dierenpark and the Vandermark family history are no longer content to stay in the past, will tragedy triumph or can their tenuous hope prevail?

War for the Waking World by Wayne Thomas Batson

About the Book

★★★★★

Would you be willing to fight for your dreams?

In this final installment in the exciting Dreamtreaders trilogy from popular fantasy author Wayne Thomas Batson, dreams, fantasy, and real-world consequences make for a great read.

Fifteen-year-old Archer Keaton has the ability to enter and explore his dreams. He is a Dreamtreader, one of three selected from each generation. Their mission: to protect the waking world from the Nightmare Lord who dwells beyond the Slumber Gate. But as Archer's dreams become more dangerous and threatening, so too does his waking life.

In this fast-paced-conclusion to this exciting trilogy, the dreamworld and the waking world bleed into each other when a rift is formed between the two. People in the real world suddenly find their waking lives resemble their wildest dreams. Now it's up to Archer and his fellow Dreamtreaders to race to reverse the rift before too much damage is done and to battle Archer's ex-best friend Kara, who sits on the throne of the Nightmare Lord. Kara is building an army of her own. Will Archer be strong enough to stand against her?

In the final installment of the Dreamtreaders series, War for the Waking World, Wayne Thomas Batson delivers another exciting, fantastical, and spiritually rich adventure. With familiar characters from the previous novels, the settings of both the waking world and the dream world, and a series of dramatic events, Batson’s book is a quick and addicting read. I highly enjoyed it and would recommend it to any interested fans of young adult fantasy. It is beneficial to start the series from the beginning - Dreamtreaders and Search for the Shadow Key before War for the Waking World - but the entire series is definitely worth the read.

Thanks to LitFuse Publicity Group, I received a copy of War for the Waking World and the opportunity to provide an honest review. I was not required to write a positive review, and all the opinions I have expressed are my own. To read other opinions, be sure to check out what other reviewers think here, and purchase a copy of the book here.

About the Author

Wayne Thomas Batson is an American writer. He has been married to his wife, Mary Lu, for seventeen years and has four children. He currently works as a teacher at Folly Quarter Middle School teaching sixth grade English language arts and is the youngest of four children. His most recent series, "Dreamtreaders" published by Thomas Nelson Inc (2014), is a modern-day paranormal YA adventure dealing with the subject of dreams.

Find him online at his website and Facebook.