Truth Is Stranger Than...

In 1965, a young man named Daniel Burros was arrested at a Ku Klux Klan demonstration in Brooklyn, N.Y. He was a skinhead, a KKK Grand Dragon, a high-ranking member of the Nazi Party and—a Jew. When the New York Times exposed his Jewish identity in a front-page article, Burros put a bullet through his head. His story has recently been made into a film called The Believer, which won the Grand Jury Prize at last year's Sundance Film Festival and has garnered much critical acclaim (although distributors have been shy of the film's controversial content). In The Believer: Confronting Jewish Self-Hatred, screenwriter Henry Bean presents the entire shooting script of the film, along with additional essays about the movie and its potential impact. This volume will make a fine companion when the film appears on Showtime this month and has its long-awaited theatrical release in May. (Thunder's Mouth, $14.95 paper 256p ISBN 1-56025-372-X; Mar.)

Spring Fling Books

"What are you doing to create a legacy your descendants will cherish tomorrow?" ask Cheryl Lightle and Rhonda Anderson, cofounders of Creative Memories, one of the world's largest organizations dedicated to scrapbooking (they prefer the term "album making"). Their book, The Creative Memories Way: Creating Keepsake Albums and Building Your Family Legacy, shows readers how to preserve their photographs, memorabilia and journal entries for future generations. It also encourages them to be creative about recording their lives: to write a bio-poem for each of their children, for example, or to make "tribute albums" to mark special occasions such as a wedding or a milestone birthday. Geared for the beginner, this accessible guide with many references to church traditions, will help many people to create keepsake albums to cherish. (WaterBrook, $17.99 166p ISBN 1-57856-481-6; Mar.)

In That's a Keeper!: Reflections on Life from a Bass Fisherman, H. Norman Wright provides pithy reflections on God, fishing and the spiritual life. The writing can be awkward at times and some of the messages hackneyed (you've got to be persistent; anger and fishing don't mix; older is better), but he also reels in some more valuable insights. Wright's meditation on the "accomplishments" of fishing, for example, serves as an important reminder in this fast-paced world that achievements aren't everything. Sometimes, he points out, wasting time is not a waste of time. (Bethany, $15.99 288p ISBN 0-7642-2550-2; May)

When nothing else will rejuvenate a stressed-out woman, it's time for the girlfriends to step in—or rather, to step out. So says the mother-daughter writing team of Kathleen Laing and Elizabeth Butterfield in The Girlfriend's Getaway: A Complete Guide to the Weekend Adventure That Turns Friends into Sisters and Sisters into Friends. They provide all of the details for planning a short getaway for a group of women friends, from choosing the women to invite for the weekend to holding devotional vigils and strengthening relationships long after the last Twinkie has been devoured. (WaterBrook, $10.95 paper ISBN 1-57856-516-2; Apr.)

Devotions for Mom

Michele Howe offers heartfelt concern for single moms in Pilgrim Prayers for Single Mothers, a brief devotional from Pilgrim Press. Each devotion opens with a story—a single mother whose son cries every day when she drops him off at his new day care, another woman who breaks off a dead-end dating relationship with a non-believer and still another who is coping with loneliness as her 17-year-old daughter heads off to college. Throughout, Howe shows great sensitivity for many of the issues facing single Christian mothers, such as financial problems, exhaustion, confused or angry children, dating dilemmas and the pain of divorce. Each story is followed by a sincere and loving prayer. ($10 128p ISBN 0-8298-1472-8; Mar.)

Although there are numerous devotionals available for first-time mothers, Mildred Tengbom's Devotions for a New Mother is one of the best-designed, with an attractive layout in a gift book format. The 45 devotions are brief, sometimes too brief, and the poetry is sometimes too well-groomed, but the emotions are honest and down-to-earth. (Bethany, $12.99 128p ISBN 0-7642-2598-7; Apr.)