Nonfiction
Fox News host Shannon Bream continues to have soaring sales of her book for the Fox media empire, heavily-promoted The Women of the Bible Speak: the Wisdom of 16 Women and Their Lessons for Today (Broadside). It locks in at #1 for the Mothers Day month of May, the same place it held in April.
At #2, is Jennie Allen’s wake-you-up splash hit, Get Out of Your Head: Stopping the Spiral of Toxic Thoughts (WaterBrook) followed by a mince-no-words alarm call to evangelicals by theology school dean Voddie T. Baucham, Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism’s Looming Catastrophe (Salem) at #3.
Most of May’s top 10 titles divide between ones trumpeting calls to action, jolting readers toward Godly self-improvement and self-acceptance, or ones that promise balm and soothing times with the Almighty. The five titles n the list from Thomas Nelson show the divide. Two have take-charge tones, including Louie Giglio’s newest title, Don’t Give the Enemy a Seat at Your Table: It’s Time to Win the Battle of Your Mind, which debuts on the list at #8, and Sarah Jakes Roberts’ Women Evolve: Break Up with Your Fears and Revolutionize Your Life at #5.
The other three Nelson titles carry on the always-popular suggestion to turn toward peace and beauty: Lysa Terkeurst’s uplifting Seeing Beautiful Again: 50 Devotions to Find Redemption in Every Part of Your Life, at #4, and Forgiving What You Can’t Forget: Discover How to Move on, Make Peace with Painful Memories, and Create a Life that’s Beautiful Again, at #9, and Sarah Young’s evidently unstoppable reign on the list with Jesus Calling: Enjoying Peace in His Presence at #6.
A smart marketing move catapulted a 2015 title into the #10 slot on the list. Prolific inspirational author Dutch Sheets posted the text of his six-year-old work, The Pleasure of His Company: A Journey to Intimate Friendship with God (Bethany House) one chapter a day during May at his website, “GiveHim15,” which promotes prayer.
Fiction
The two new additions to a very familiar list are Aftermath, the newest Christian contemporary crime novel by Terri Blackstock (Thomas Nelson) at #5, and The Passenger, by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz (Metropolitan Books, translation by Philip Boehm) at #6.
Written in 1938, The Passenger details a man’s frantic attempt to flee the Nazis as terror against Jews ramps up. The 23-year-old author had revised the work, but the new manuscript was thought lost when Boschwitz was killed in1942 after the ship carrying him toward safety in England was torpedoed by Germans. The updated manuscript, found in a German archive decades later, drew attention from the New York Times and The Guardian this spring. A Publishers Weekly review said The Passenger is a “chilling time capsule” (that) offers a startling image of fascism taken hold.”
Otherwise, the May list keeps the spotlight on the same authors as in April: Karen Kingsbury #1 with A Distant Shore (Atria); Malka Adler #2 with The Brothers of Auschwitz (One More Chapter); Jonathan Cahn holding two spots with The Harbinger II: The Return at #3 (Frontline) and the original The Harbinger (Charisma House) at #9, and Francine Rivers’ long-loved Redeeming Love (Multnomah) at #4.
William P. Young’s The Shack (Windblown Media) is at #7, Wanda E Brustetters’ volume 3 in her Amish Greenhouse Mysteries series, The Robin’s Greeting (Shiloh Run) at #8 and C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce (HarperOne) at #10.
