GIVEAWAY!!!!

I am thrilled to offer my very first book giveaway on Rapid Reader!!!

John Faubion's book, Friend Me, is a really pulse-pounder, I want want to share it with one lucky winner.
How do you get in the game?

Simple:
1.Leave a comment below on this blog post

2. Go to Howards Books' Facebook page and click"like".
https://www.facebook.com/HowardBooksSimonandSchuster

3. Go to Howard Books on Twitter and follow.
https://twitter.com/Howard_Books

I will announce the winner on my blog on February 11th!!!!

Friend Me - A Profound Psycho-Thriller

Virtualfriendme.com promises the perfect friend - always just a click away; always caring and totally concerned about you and only you.

Lonely and under appreciated wife and mom, Rachel Douglas, stumbled across Virtual Friend Me while on Facebook. Curious, she decided to set up an account and create a virtual friend modeled after her best friend, who had died several years ago.

Impressed with how real her new computer generated friend was, she shared the site with her husband, Scott, who became equally intrigued. 

So much so, that he decided to create his very own friend on the sly– a woman he named Angela. Angela, who looked like a model, who was delighted to hear about his day, and who lived to tell him how amazing he was. This virtual vixen made him feel like the most incredible male in the world.  His wife, it seemed, had recently rescinded her My Husband Is The Best fan club membership, and Scott needed a little female encouragement.

And what was the harm?  She wasn’t real, after all.  Right?

What Scott, didn’t count on, when he created his online dream girl, was falling in love with this cyber-Stepford Wife.  His relationship with Rachel continued to slide downhill, and because of some questionable dealings at work, he was in danger of losing his job.  And what complicated matters more – Angela was more real than he believed.

Friend Me, a novel by newcomer John Faubion, is a timely psychological thriller that is taut and suspenseful.  A cautionary tale of contemporary disconnect from flesh and blood humanity in favor of a fantasy Internet community.

Friend Me is a real nail biter to the end, but what I love even more than the many steal-your-breath-away moments, are the insights into our logged-in society.  Faubion masterfully captures our obsession with online lives - hours spent on social media connecting with people we don’t even know - creating relationships with personas that we only know through pithy tweets or Facebook posts while our own families become more and more distant. 

Faubion doesn’t stop there.  He paints a portrait of a Christian couple gradually moving apart.  Increasingly frustrated, Scott and Rachel don’t find solace in each other but online. 

But Friend Me is not a preachy, stuffy novel.  It moves quickly with moments that defy you to put the book down.  And Faubion’s scissor-wielding, cyber-psycho is one creepy chick.

Friend Me kept me in suspense and got me thinking as well, a great combination.  I’m hoping and praying Faubion has more in store for his readers.   With his first book showing such promise, it would be a shame to let the friendship fade.

Home Run - A Leadership Book That Hits It Out Of The Park

Being a Christian is supposed to be all about abundant life – a life overflowing with joy and peace, right? 

So why is it so many Christians find themselves banging their heads off the wall wondering when things are going to turn around.  Wondering when that life of abundance is going to kick in.   Are they not sincere enough, dedicated enough?

Pastor Kevin Myers was both dedicated to God and sincere in his faith, but yet he found himself knee deep in self-doubt and frustrated faith after trying to plant a church in Georgia.  He was ready throw in the towel. He was burned out and low on hope.

But according to Myers, during this time of trial, God was revealing to him a pattern of living that would turn his life and ministry around.

Home Run: Learn God’s Game Plan For Life and Leadership, co-written by Kevin Myers and John C. Maxwell, shares that revelation in a way most Americans can relate to – through the game of baseball.

Does a trot around the bases seem a little simplistic for a life-changing epiphany?  Not being a fan of the National Pastime, I was skeptical of the import of this metaphor.  But a couple pages into Home Run and I was ordering peanuts and Cracker Jack….metaphorically, of course.

As Myers struggled to plant a viable church in the suburbs of Atlanta, he had the opportunity to be mentored by John Maxwell, the preeminent authority on Leadership, highly respected in both the secular and Christian spheres. Throughout Home Run, Maxwell offers his insights on Myers offerings, relating stories from his own experiences, which give credence to Myers’ observations.

Myers offers his readers a realistic game plan for life involving running the bases.  Starting with Connection With God at home base, Myers presents a succession of life commitments (Character, Community, and Competence) represented by first, second, and third bases.  His contention? We mess up our lives by running the bases in the wrong order.

Home Run has the potential of helping many overcome slumps in whatever inning of life they find themselves.  Myers has a winner here.

Home Run is an enjoyable read packed with scripturally founded advice.  Myers’ theory of base running is simple – without being simplistic.  And with sidebar contributions from heavy hitter Maxwell, Home Run puts it over the wall.

Home Run was received courtesy of FaithWords in exchange for an honest review.

His Promise True - Predictable Story, Characters You Care About

Maggie Boon’s got a tough life.  In 1823, a poor, mountain girl doesn’t have a lot of options, especially if her pa is determined to marry her off to an abusive widower with a passel of kids.

So when Maggie laments her fate to the handsome son of a farmer at a barn raising party, his sympathy is not unwelcome until her pa spies them and gets the wrong idea.  Pulling the magistrate from the festivities, Maggie and John David get hitched on the spot, John David befuddled by whiskey and a White Knight complex, Maggie seeing this marriage as a way of escape.

It takes just a few hours of sobering up for John David and Maggie to realize they made a mistake, but John David insists on rescuing Maggie from her predicament, and Maggie is eager to get off the mountain.   With a promise of an annulment and a better life, she sets off with her new groom.

Greta Marlow’s novel, His Promise True, follows the relationship of young Maggie and John David.  The storyline is not untypical of the genre.   Love kindles gradually over a period of time.  Several conflicts arise threatening their fragile relationship.  However, the historical setting gives the reader a taste of pioneering spirit as the couple set off to settle in Texas, overcoming many obstacles in the less than accommodating frontier wilderness.

Their journey is overflowing with peril as they make their way down the river navigating the shoals and snags of the waterways - and their relationship.

His Promise True follows the path of most romance novels, but the characters draw you in – especially John David, young, brash and flawed.   He’s not the heroic perfection populating the genre.  He’s trying to do the best he can – often falling short. And I liked him better for it.  Noble one minute, rash the next, John David was believable.  And Maggie’s scrappy attitude added definite spice to the mix. He and Maggie make mistakes, make the best of it, and move forward.  Like real human beings.

If you like frontier romances, His Promise True is an enjoyable read.  If you like characters who grow as they go, Marlow’s book shows true promise. 

   

Emotions: Confront the Lies, Conquer With Truth - Hopeful and Healing

Fear, rejection, bitterness, guilt, despair- what do you do when they come knocking on the door of your soul?

If you are in any way human, emotions can trip you up.  They are such unruly things – causing you to be up one minute, down the next. They can control our perception of the world, others, ourselves.  So how do we handle the seemingly constant barrage of feelings that at times can threaten to unhinge our ability to live abundantly.

Pastor Charles Stanley’s latest book, Emotions: Confront the Lies, Conquer with Truth, delves into the world of negative emotions with Stanley’s well-known mix of Biblical advice and wisdom achieved through personal experience.

It’s typical Stanley – solid, spiritual, and hopeful.  Each chapter tackles a debilitating emotion with an understanding of what the emotion does to us and how God wants us to overcome the effects of the emotion and live a life that honors Him.

Each chapter ends with a series of questions intended for personal reflection or group study – if you are so inclined to unearth your emotions in a small group.

Emotions Confront the Lies, Conquer with Truth can, indeed, be helpful in wrestling those inner-demons into submission.  It’s tried and true Stanley – level-headed and calming, like advice from a trusted friend. 

If you have been a follower of Christ for any length of time, there probably won’t be any major revelations.  But for a new-believer trying to sort through baggage, Emotions could have the answers for healing.

The Last Perfect Summer - A Poignant, Nostalgic Trip

The Last Perfect Summer was absolute magic. 

Please understand a novel that centers itself around any sport as The Last Perfect Summer does, is like dose of Benadryl with a chamomile tea chaser to me.  As a rule, no form of fiction loses my attention quicker than a story laced with athletics.

So when I say The Last Perfect Summer is magic, I am saying that it transcends mere “sports genre” fiction.  It is much more than a story about Little League baseball.  It is a story of the Boomer generation growing up during those hazy summer days.  It’s about small towns, close-knit neighborhoods, and families that worked hard and sacrificed – and taught their kids to do the same.

At the center of it all is Teddy Tresh, a successful 40 something that decides to visit a childhood friend who is living in a mental institution.  Harry has been hospitalized for years after contracting encephalitis, which caused brain damage that left him feeble-minded and hopeless.  When Teddy first sees him after decades, he is determined to connect with his childhood friend in the only way that seems feasible – reminiscing with Harry about their days growing up in the small, Western Pennsylvania town of Rockland.

The Last Perfect Summer shifts back and forth between the present day conversation with Teddy and Harry and their days as pre-adolescent boys during the 60s.

Teddy’s visit with Harry is moving.  Harry progresses from an aged, confused psychiatric inmate to a man connecting to whom he was and is through the stories Teddy tells of their summer in 1964 when their all-star team made it to the championship.

As touching as those chapters are, it is the chapters centering on the boy’s life in small-town America in the 1960s that capture the heart – especially the hearts of those of us in the Baby Boomer generation.

Prence brings it all back.  Those early summer mornings where the day stretches ahead with limitless possibilities - spontaneous games of backyard baseball, crushes on the cute little girls next door, catching frogs and catching heck from any mom who caught careless boys stomping through their flower gardens.

Prence’s prose transported me back to my old neighborhood, the days before Amber Alerts and fears of letting your kid out of your sight.  A time where every kid in the neighborhood jumped on his bike first thing in the morning, checked in at dinner time, and made sure he was home when the streetlights came on - a time when one of the highlights of the afternoon was chugging down a chocolate Coke at the local drugstore with your buddies.

For a Boomer like me, this book was a welcome vacation to the halcyon days of my childhood.  For a baseball fan, it would be pure heaven.

Because Little League is the core of Teddy’s childhood summer - the championship, that golden grail that beckoned.  Even for someone uninterested in baseball, like myself, Prence wove those baseball practices and games into intense heart pounding spectacles of victories and defeats as seen through the eyes of a 10 year old boy.  Prence’s writing puts you in the middle of that dusty ball field waiting, with stomach churning, for that ball to come straight toward you, hands sweaty and heart racing. 

The Last Perfect Summer is poignant and charming.  For Boomers, it’s nostalgic and will make you smile in recognition of those childhood summer days.

But even if you aren’t a boomer, it’s just a darn good read. 

Courtesy copy of The Last Perfect Summer obtained from Windy City Publishers in exchange for an honest review

Prayers and Promises For Worried Parents - An Encouraging Devotional for Parents of Prodigals

There is nothing in the world as painful to a parent like a child walking away from the faith.  It’s heartbreaking and devastating.  Praying and wondering if that child will ever come back, it’s a nightmare that can seem endless.

Author Robert J. Morgan knows that feeling all too well as a parent of a prodigal. Through his own personal dark journey as a father praying for a wayward child comes this devotional, Prayers and Promises for Worried Parents.

Morgan’s 108 devotional entries encourage parents with scriptures and prayers designed to keep their focus on God and his faithfulness.

Originally, Prayers and Promises was meant as a personal journal for Morgan as he struggled with depression and anxiety over losing a child to the world.  It wasn’t until later that Morgan realized that his journal would be beneficial to parents going through the same struggles.

Although filled with scriptures and prayers that uplift, many of the illustrations Morgan used are so dated as to be a distraction.  As a contemporary parent, I found the frequent stories of prodigals and their parents living in the 1700s/1800s a bit of a disconnect from the modern life.  To be fair, Morgan does include personal stories, and testimonies from friends but the centuries old illustrations, even though they conveyed God’s faithfulness, still left me feeling distant from what God must be doing today.

But the use of bygone illustrations aside, Prayers and Promises for Worried Parents is just that – an affirming devotional for any grieving parent of a prodigal.

A complementary copy of Prayers and Promises for Worried Parents was obtain through Howard Books in exchange for a fair and honest review.