NONFICTION
Sept. 1
The Impossible Kid: Parenting a Strong-Willed Child with Love and Grace (Barbour, $14.99, trade paper, ISBN 978-1-64352-981-3). Relationship coach Lucille Williams provides tools for parents to instill encouragement in their kids and raise adults who reflect the nature and character of God.
Unruly Catholic Feminists: Prose, Poetry, and the Future of the Faith (Excelsior, $19.95, trade paper, ISBN 978-1-4384-8500-3). Editors Jeana Delrosso, Leigh Eicke, and Ana Kothe explore, through short stories, poems, and personal essays, how women are coming to terms with their feminism and Catholicism in the twenty-first century.
New Rules for Radicals: TNT for Faith-Based Leaders (Judson, $17.99, trade paper, ISBN 978-0-8170-1826-9). Willard W. C. Ashley Sr., advises radicals to defeat systems that reward those who keep some persons marginalized in order to maintain their power and the status quo.
Sept. 3
The Soul of Desire: Discovering the Neuroscience of Longing, Beauty, and Community (IVP, $25, ISBN 978-1-5140-0210-0). Curt Thompson weaves together psychiatry and spiritual formation to suggest that underneath all our desires is the desire to be known—and what’s more, that this fundamental desire manifests itself in our deep need to make things of beauty.
Sept. 7
The Suicide Solution: Finding Your Way Out of the Darkness (Salem, $16.99, trade paper, ISBN 978-1-68451-159-4). Child and adolescent psychiatrist Daniel Emina and Rick Lawrence, a pastor and editor, address the clinical realities of anxiety, depression, and suicide and draw from the transformational relational strategies of Jesus to chart a path into life and freedom.
Five Things Biblical Scholars Wish Theologians Knew (IVP Academic, $20, trade paper, ISBN 978-0-8308-4935-2) and a companion volume, Five Things Theologians Wish Biblical Scholars Knew (IVP Academic, $20, trade paper, ISBN 978-0-8308-5390-8). New Testament scholar Scot McKnight addresses what theologians could learn from biblical studies and theologian Hans Boersma flips the script — telling scholars what theology can teach them. The paired publication is designed to foster understanding between the disciplines.
The Hard Good: How Showing Up When You Want to Shut Down Is the Beginning of God’s Greatest Work in and Through You (Thomas Nelson, $18.99, trade paper, ISBN 978-0-7852-3201-8). Lisa Whittle shows why the divine road that leads to God’s perfect plan for our lives is often paved with difficulties. But in accepting the difficulties, we discover our life’s purpose.
Take Back Your Family: From the Tyrants of Burnout, Busyness, Individualism, and the Nuclear Ideal (Thomas Nelson, $27.99, ISBN 978-1-4002-2176-9). New York Times bestselling author Jefferson Bethke critiques the nuclear family ideal and calls for a sweeping new paradigm that brings not only longed-for stability but also radical blessings to the world.
Believing Is Seeing: A Physicist Explains How Science Shattered His Atheism and Revealed the Necessity of Faith (Tyndale Momentum, $24.99, ISBN 978-1-4964-5557-4). Journalist and physicist Michael Guillen, tells the story of his journey from Atheism to Christianity, citing the latest discoveries in neuroscience, physics, astronomy, and mathematics
What Is Theology? Christian Thought and Contemporary Life (Fordham Univ., $27.95, trade paper, ISBN 978-0-8232-9782-5). Thinkers across many disciplines are grappling with the Christian theological inheritance of the modern world. Adam Kotsko presents Christian theology as a creative and constructive framework in viewing the interplay of politics, economics, and race.
Why, as a Muslim, I Defend Liberty (Cato Institute, $14.95, trade paper, ISBN 978-1-952223-17-4). Mustafa Akyol, a Turkish journalist and senior fellow at the Cato Institute, critiques authoritarian interpretations of Islam with personal stories, historical anecdotes, theological insights, and accessible prose.
The Doubters’ Club: Good-Faith Conversations with Skeptics, Atheists, and the Spiritually Wounded (NavPress, $16.99, trade paper, ISBN 978-1-64158-335-0). Preston Ulmer offers a practical guide and tools for people who want to live in friendship with those who think differently than they do.
Sept. 9
Song of Songs: The Bible’s Great Love Poems in Calligraphy (Paraclete, $30, ISBN 978-1-64060-173-4). Calligrapher and author Margaret Shepherd re-interprets the meaning of Song of Songs using traditional calligraphy in fresh modern layouts and translations.
Baby Dinosaurs on the Ark? The Bible and Modern Science and the Trouble of Making It All Fit (Eerdmans, $17.99, trade paper, ISBN 978-0-8028-7944-8). Janet Kellogg Ray, a science educator who grew up a creationist, shows how a literal interpretation of the book of Genesis doesn’t mesh with scientific reality but science doesn’t obviate God’s role.
Sept. 14
The Dressmakers of Auschwitz: The True Story of the Women Who Sewed to Survive (Harper, $17.99 trade paper (400p) ISBN 978-0-06-303093-0). Lucy Adlington (The Red Ribbon) retells the stories of Jewish and Communist seamstresses who tried to survive in the Nazi death camp by making fancy clothes in a workshop established by the wife of the Nazi camp commander. (Sept.)
To My Beloveds: Letters on Faith, Race, Loss, and Radical Hope (Chalice, $16.99, ISBN 978-0-8272-3727-8). Activist Jennifer Bailey offers heartfelt letters of encouragement, comfort, revelation, and hope for young activists and emerging faith leaders.
The Genius of Jesus: The Man Who Changed Everything (Convergent, $24, ISBN 978-0-593-13738-3). Erwin Raphael McManus asks: what would happen if we studied and emulated Jesus, not only through the lens of his divinity but as a genius who showed us what it means to live fully human?
Humbled: Welcoming the Uncomfortable Work of God (B&H, $9.99, trade paper, ISBN 978-1-0877-5173-3). Humility, according to the Bible, is not something we can just up and do. David Mathis presents both the negative and positive examples of Scripture to teach us that humility first comes from the hand of God.
A More Perfect Union: A New Vision for Building the Beloved Community (Broadleaf, $26.99, ISBN 978-1-5064-6453-4). Adam Russell Taylor, president of Sojourners, reimagines a contemporary version of Martin Luther King’s beloved community that will unify the country around a shared moral vision.
If God Still Breathes, Why Can’t I? Black Lives Matter and Biblical Authority (Eerdmans, $16.99, trade paper, ISBN 978-0-8028-7926-4). Biblical scholar Angela Parker calls out the ways white Christian men in power have used Scripture to justify suffocating control over marginalized groups.
Saint Hildegard: Ancient Insights for Modern Seekers (She Writes Press, $16.95, paperback, ISBN: 978-1-6474-2181-6). Susan Garthwaite makes the case for the contemporary value of 12th Century mystic's advice to befriend our own souls and to become a "special friend of God."
Sept. 15
Mary Lou Williams: Music for the Soul (Liturgical Press, $16.95, paper, ISBN 978-0-8146-6401-8). Musician and scholar Deanna Witkowski explores the spiritual journey that led pioneering jazz pianist and composer Williams to convert to Catholicism and to spend the rest of her life sharing her gospel message that “jazz is love.”
Sept. 17
Be Restored: Healing our Sexual Wounds through Jesus’ Merciful Love (Ave Maria, $16.95, trade paper, ISBN 978-1-64680-023-0). Bob Schuchts of the John Paul II Healing Center offers concrete steps for healing and wholeness, relying on a combination of clinical expertise, Catholic theology, and personal experience as a survivor.
A Tragic Mistake: Rebuilding a Life After an Accidental Killing (Morehouse, $16.95, trade paper, ISBN 978-1-64065-224-8). Using his own story, David W. Peters explores the journey toward healing and wholeness after unintentionally causing someone’s death.
Sept. 21
Spouse in the House: Rearranging Our Attitudes to Make Room for Each Other (Kregel, $18.99, trade paper, ISBN 978-0-8254-4678-8). Cynthia Ruchti and Becky Melby provide spiritual, emotional, relational, even physical steps to take when spouses chafe with constant togetherness.
Perhaps: Reclaiming the Space Between Doubt and Dogmatism by Joshua M McNall (IVP Academic, $26, trade paper, ISBN 978-0-8308-5520-9). Theologian Joshua McNall encourages readers to ask difficult questions and exercise their imagination in order to move toward trust and be more comfortable with uncertainty.
Crazy Faith: It’s Only Crazy Until It Happens (WaterBrook, $26, trade paper, ISBN 978-0-593-23919-3) Pastor and author Michael Todd (Relationship Goals) asks Christians to dream in ways they once thought impossible by being alert to God’s voice and choosing hope over fear.
God Gets Everything God Wants (Eerdmans, $21.99, ISBN 978-0-8028-7856-4). Katie Hays invites weary Christians, former Christians, and the Christ-curious to reimagine the church as a community of “beautiful, broken, and burdened” people doing their best.
Sept. 24
American Sage: The Spiritual Teachings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Univ. of Massachusetts, $26.95, trade paper, ISBN 978-1-62534-607-0). Unitarian minister Barry Andrews explores Emerson’s writings, including his journals and letters, and makes them accessible to today’s spiritual seekers.
Sept. 28
Feed the Wolf: Befriending Our Fears in the Way of Saint Francis (Broadleaf, $26.99, ISBN 978-1-5064-7073-3). Scholar Jon M. Sweeney explores 15 spiritual practices from the essential wisdom of Saint Francis to ease fear and uncertainty in precarious times.
The Right Kind of Confident: The Remarkable Grit of a God-Fearing Woman (Thomas Nelson, $18.99, trade paper, ISBN 978-1-4002-0986-6). Author and Bible teacher Mary Kassian shows readers how they can be transformed into bold, indomitable women when they develop a reverent fear of God.
If God Is Love, Don’t Be a Jerk: Finding a Faith That Makes Us Better Humans (Westminster John Knox, $18, trade paper, ISBN 978-0-664-26684-4). John Pavlovitz examines the bedrock ideas of Christianity - the existence of hell, the utility of prayer, the way we treat LGBTQ people, the value of anger - to show how beliefs shape our relationships with God and humankind.
FICTION
Sept. 1
Undercurrent of Secrets, Volume 4 (Barbour, $12.99, trade paper, ISBN 978-1-64352-994-3). Two women, a century apart, are bound by a haunting secret aboard a legendary steamboat in Rachel Scott McDaniel’s novel, the latest in a series of historical romances, Doors to the Past.
Sept. 7
The Healing of Natalie Curtis (Revell, $16.99, trade paper, ISBN 978-0-8007-3613-2). Jane Kirkpatrick’s lead character, pianist and singer Natalie Curtis, has lost her joy in music but rediscovers it when she encounters melodies, rhythms, and stories of Native Americans. She fights to preserve their music against government efforts to enforce assimilation.
Sept. 21
Mr. Nicholas (Paraclete, $22, ISBN 978-1-64060-735-4) is told through the eyes of a JB, a clever, open 10-year-old boy with Downs Syndrome who befriends a mysterious toy store owner and reminds his cynical parents of Christmas magic.
The Unlikely Yarn of the Dragon Lady (Kregel, 21, $15.99, trade paper, ISBN 978-0-8254-4702-0). In a debut book by Sharon Mondragón, a pastor pushes four women who knit prayer shawls at the church out into a public space where they face knotty issues in their own lives and community.
Sept. 28
First Christmas on Huckleberry Hill (Zebra, $8.99, mass market, ISBN 978-1-4201-5205-0). Jennifer Beckstrand’s latest title in a series on matchmaking grandparents Anna and Felty is a prequel, set in 1952 when they were mismatched young lovers facing seemingly impossible obstacles.
