Half the Battle By Jon Chasteen

Do you ever feel the pressure to hide your struggles in order to look like a “good Christian”? The truth is, we all face battles and hurts in our lives. Scripture is full of God-fearing men and women who tried to cover up their problems. For Mary and Martha, the death of their brother, Lazarus, was the ultimate devastation. They put his body in a dark place and rolled a stone in front of it. But God knew where they buried their pain, and He knows where you bury yours too.

Jon Chasteen explores Old and New Testament examples of people whom God invited to begin the healing process by confronting their secret pain. Through this book with an included study guide, you will learn to:

• Acknowledge the struggles you’ve been avoiding
• Let go of shame and regret
• Partner with God in your healing
• Find freedom and lasting peace

God wants to visit the place of your pain, redeem your past, and set you free. Will you let Him?

Pick up your copy here...
https://www.amazon.com/Half-Battle-Healing-Hidden-Hurts/dp/1951227271

Dr. Jon Chasteen is president of The King’s University in Southlake, Texas. He and his wife, Michele, also serve as the lead pastors of Victory Church in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Jon’s greatest passion is to empower and equip the local church to live, move, and be in the fullness of Christ.

My Thoughts...
This was an encouraging read or should I say journey. It was one I was glad that I took.
We all struggle from time to time, so we need to have the tools to learn how to let go of the shame and learn how to heal. This was a helpful tool to moving in the right direction to start that healing process.
I gave this book 4 stars and I hope that you will grab your copy.
The Mary Reader received this book from the publisher for review. A favorable review was not required and all views expressed are our own.

The Christmas Swap By Melody Carlson

All Emma Daley wants this holiday season is a white Christmas. But the young teacher and struggling musician sure can't find that in sunny Arizona. Luckily, there's someone living in a perfect mountain home in the Colorado Rockies looking to make a vacation trade this year.

Tyler Prescott is an in-demand songwriter and talented musician who put his own singing career on hold to write songs for celebrity acts to perform. When his mother convinces him to do a vacation trade for Christmas, he never imagined one of the houseguests would be so sweet--or so strikingly pretty. Naturally, he decides to stick around, and, to get better acquainted, he poses as the house's caretaker. But when Emma's friend Gillian discovers his true identity and sets her sights on him, things
get . . . messy.

Fan favorite Melody Carlson is back with another delightful Christmas tale to warm your heart on those cold winter evenings.

Pick up your copy here...
https://www.amazon.com/Christmas-Swap-Melody-Carlson/dp/0800738020/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2Z5YFZ4N6Q9RB&dchild=1&keywords=the+christmas+swap+by+melody+carlson&qid=1599351595&sprefix=The+Christmas+swap%2Caps%2C172&sr=8-1

Melody Carlson has written more than 200 books (with sales around 6.5 million) for teens, women and children. That's a lot of books, but mostly she considers herself a "storyteller." Her novels range from serious issues like schizophrenia (Finding Alice) to lighter topics like house-flipping (A Mile in My Flip-Flops) but most of the inspiration behind her fiction comes right out of real life. Her young adult novels (Diary of a Teenage Girl, TrueColors etc.) appeal to teenage girls around the world. Her annual Christmas novellas become more popular each year. She's won a number of awards (including Romantic Time's Career Achievement Award, the Rita and the Gold Medallion) and some of her books have been optioned for film/TV. Carlson has two grown sons and makes her home in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and yellow Lab dog. To find out more about Melody Carlson, visit her website at http://www.melodycarlson.com/

My Thoughts...
I have read every one of and own every one of Carlson's Christmas novellas. I enjoy them all and look forward to them every year. This year Carlson wrote a fun Christmas romance and the ski element was perfect. I want to read this again and again. I love a fun romance set in a ski town. I gave The Christmas Swap 5 stars two times. I HIGHLY recommend this novella.
The Mary Reader received this book from the publisher for review. A favorable review was not required and all views expressed are our own.

Other People's Pets By R.L. Maizes

R.L. Maizes's Other People’s Pets examines the gap between the families we’re born into and those we create, and the danger that holding on to a troubled past may rob us of the future.

La La Fine relates to animals better than she does to other people. Abandoned by a mother who never wanted a family, raised by a locksmith-turned-thief father, La La looks to pets when it feels like the rest of the world conspires against her.

La La’s world stops being whole when her mother, who never wanted a child, abandons her twice. First, when La La falls through thin ice on a skating trip, and again when the accusations of “unfit mother” feel too close to true. Left alone with her father―a locksmith by trade, and a thief in reality―La La is denied a regular life. She becomes her father’s accomplice, calming the watchdog while he strips families of their most precious belongings.

When her father’s luck runs out and he is arrested for burglary, everything La La has painstakingly built unravels. In her fourth year of veterinary school, she is forced to drop out, leaving school to pay for her father’s legal fees the only way she knows how―robbing homes once again.

As an animal empath, she rationalizes her theft by focusing on houses with pets whose maladies only she can sense and caring for them before leaving with the family’s valuables. The news reports a puzzled police force―searching for a thief who left behind medicine for the dog, water for the parrot, or food for the hamster.

Desperate to compensate for new and old losses, La La continues to rob homes, but it’s a strategy that ultimately will fail her.

Pick up your copy here...
https://www.amazon.com/Other-Peoples-Pets-R-L-Maizes/dp/125030413X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=TBOZJJB62NYJ&dchild=1&keywords=other+peoples+pets+by+r.l.+maizes&qid=1598727588&sprefix=Other+peoples+pets+by+R.L.%2Caps%2C171&sr=8-1

R.L. Maizes is the author the short story collection, We Love Anderson Cooper, and the novel Other People's Pets, coming July 14, 2020 (Celadon Books, Macmillan). Maizes's short stories have aired on National Public Radio and have appeared in the literary magazines Electric Literature, Witness, and Bellevue Literary Review, among others. Her essays have aired on NPR and have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and elsewhere.

Maizes is an alumna of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Tin House Summer Writer’s Workshop.

My Thoughts...
La la and the animals were the best part of this book.
 If you are an animal love then you need to grab a copy of this one.
You are going to really enjoy the story.
I gave Other People's Pets 4 stars and I hope that you grab your copy.
The Mary Reader received this book from the publisher for review. A favorable review was not required and all views expressed are our own.

Under Pressure By Robert Pobi

A series of deadly explosions rock the city of New York and with too many victims and no known motive, the F.B.I. turns once again to Dr. Lucas Page in Robert Pobi's Under Pressure.

On a beautiful October evening, New York City's iconic Guggenheim Museum is closed for a tech company's private gala. Until an explosion rocks the night, instantly killing 702 people, including every single attendee―yet the damage to the building itself was minimal.

An explosion of that precision was no accident and, in response, the FBI mobilizes its entire team -- but the sheer number of victims strains their resources. Were all 702 victims in the wrong place at the wrong time, or was there only one target and 701 unlucky bystanders? That many victim files is a staggering amount of data to sort through and Brett Kehoe, Special Agent in Charge of Manhattan, decides that he can't do this without more computational power.

Dr. Lucas Page, astrophysicist, university professor, and former FBI agent, is uniquely gifted for the task at hand―he can visualize a crime scene as if he was a bystander and can break down any set of data at a glance. Even though Page wants nothing to do with the FBI, with his city under attack and his family at risk, he steps in to find a killer in a haystack before they strike again.

Pick up your copy here...
https://www.amazon.com/Under-Pressure-Novel-Lucas-Page/dp/1250293960/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1599007773&sr=8-1

Robert Pobi's novels have been published in more than twenty-five countries, making bestseller lists around the world. He divides his time between Canada and the United States.

My Thoughts...
I love FBI thrillers, and I really love them when they are written by a pro. 
This is a new author for me, I flew through this book. It held my attention before I know it I was almost finished with it.
It can be read as a stand alone but I am going back and reading the first book in the series.
Be sure to grab your copy and check out this author, he is very talented.
4 stars and on to the next book.
The Mary Reader received this book from the publisher for review. A favorable review was not required and all views expressed are our own.

Shadows of the Dead By Spencer Kope

The best tracker in the world, a man with a secret and a special set of skills, must find two nearly untraceable killers before time runs out for their victims, in Spencer Kope's Shadows of the Dead.A woman―abducted and found in the trunk of a car after a high-speed chase―regains consciousness in the ICU to reveal two crucial pieces of information: the man who kidnapped her is not the same as the man who left her in the woods, and she's not the first victim―in fact, she is number eight.

Magnus “Steps” Craig is part of the elite three-man Special Tracking Unit of the FBI. Known for his ability to find and follow trails over any surface, Steps is called in on cases that require his unparalleled skills. But there’s a secret to his talent. Steps has a kind of synesthesia where he can see the ‘essence’ of a person―what he calls ‘shine’―on everything they’ve touched.

Brought in to track the driver through a dense forest after the blood hounds have lost his trail, Steps and his partner Jimmy find the driver laughing maniacally, babbling about souls, and hiding a pristinely maintained box of eight posed rats. Now the Special Tracking Unit must chase two villains―through not just the real world, but the dark web as well―tracking an enemy they can't see, as time runs out for the unknown victims.

Pick up your copy here...
https://www.amazon.com/Untitled-Steps-Special-Tracking-Unit/dp/1250178347/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2SG2NO3I0DEQR&dchild=1&keywords=shadows+of+the+dead+spencer+kope&qid=1599006533&sprefix=Shadows+of+the+%2Caps%2C184&sr=8-1

SPENCER KOPE is the Crime Analyst for the Whatcom County Sheriff's Office. Currently assigned to Detectives Division, he provides case support to detectives and deputies, and is particularly good at identifying possible suspects. In his spare time he developed a database-driven analytical process called Forensic Vehicle Analysis (FVA) used to identify the make, model and year range of vehicles from surveillance photos. It's a tool he's used repeatedly to solve crimes. One of his favorite pastimes is getting lost in a bookstore, and he lives in Washington State. Collecting the Dead is his first novel.

My Thoughts...
Who's ready for a mystery? Kope has a way of writing mysteries that pull you in and you live in the pages of the book as if you are living out the mystery not reading it.
This was my first book in this series and I did not feel lost of left out. It can be read as a stand alone. I plan to go back and read the first two in the series because I enjoyed this one.
I gave it 4 star and I  can't wait to read more from this author.
The Mary Reader received this book from the publisher for review. A favorable review was not required and all views expressed are our own.

Cut To The Bone By Ellison Cooper

In Ellison Cooper's new standalone novel Cut to the Bone, a bus full of high school students has disappeared from Washington D.C. and FBI neuroscientist Sayer Altair must hunt down the culprit who has a link to her own past.

After grieving the death of her fiancé and almost losing her job, Agent Sayer Altair is finally starting to rebuild her life. Her research into the minds of psychopaths is breaking new ground and her strange little family is thriving. But Sayer’s newfound happiness is threatened when she is called in to investigate a girl’s body left inside a circle of animal figurines below a cryptic message written in blood. When they discover that the dead girl is one of twenty-four missing high school students, Sayer quickly realizes that nothing in this case is what it seems.

As the investigation draws her in to a tangled web of fake identities and false leads, the trail soon begins to point directly to her own life. Now, Sayer must confront her painful past to uncover her connection to the deranged killer if she hopes to save the missing teens and protect everything that she loves.

Pick up your copy here...
https://www.amazon.com/Cut-Bone-Novel-Agent-Altair/dp/1250173892/ref=sr_1_1?crid=BJJQN7H3FNJG&dchild=1&keywords=cut+to+the+bone+ellison+cooper&qid=1599004597&sprefix=Cut+to+the+boone%2Caps%2C169&sr=8-1

Ellison Cooper has a Ph.D. in anthropology from UCLA, with a background in archaeology, cultural neuroscience, ancient religion, colonialism, and human rights. She has conducted fieldwork in Central America, West Africa, Micronesia, and Western Europe. She has worked as a murder investigator in Washington DC, and is a certified K9 Search and Rescue Federal Disaster Worker. She now lives in the Bay Area with her husband and son.

My Thoughts...

This is series just keeps getting better and better. I am addicted to it.
I can't get enough of Coopers books they draw me in from the very beginning and hold me until the last page. This can be read as a stand alone but why would you want to do that. The books are easy reads and you can read them in one sitting.
I gave this book 4 stars and recommend this whole series.
The Mary Reader received this book from the publisher for review. A favorable review was not required and all views expressed are our own.

Self To Lose Self To Find By Marilyn Vancil

Discover the growth that’s possible when we understand our authentic selves as God intended by exploring more deeply the Enneagram tool, paired with profound scriptural insights.

The Enneagram—a system of nine interconnected personality types—has been developed over many years to offer opportunities for personal development and provide a foundation for understanding others.

Now a certified Enneagram coach shows how a scriptural perspective can lead us to a path of freedom. In Self to Lose, Self to Find, Marilyn Vancil unpacks our human dilemma, sets the scriptural foundation, explores the nine Enneagram personalities, and shows us practical ways to have a more meaningful life and healthier relationships. At its best, the Enneagram doesn't merely describe who we are, but shows us why we do what we do. It invites us to see the innate gifts and inclinations of our original design—the person we were before trials and traumas began to shape us. It also reveals the strategies and false narratives that keep us from becoming who we're truly meant to be.

Vancil offers a compelling biblical case for the Enneagram by drawing from John 12:24, which describes how we, like seeds, construct a protective coat that helps us survive in a world where we encounter challenges and insecurities. But for us to truly live a fruitful life, we must allow the protective coat to soften and fall away in order to grow.

This is what sets Vancil apart as both a seasoned Enneagram expert and a spiritual director: Within a scriptural context, she demonstrates how the Enneagram can be a vehicle for growth and transformation by laying out the realities of each Enneagram type, affirming the inherent genius of each type, showcasing the unhealthy tendencies of each type's false self, and illuminating the undeniable path to freedom for each one.

Combining rich biblical wisdom with Enneagram wisdom and real-life experiences, this compelling resource is a must for anyone who longs for a happier, freer life.

Pick up your copy here...

https://www.amazon.com/Self-Lose-Find-Enneagram-God-Gifted/dp/0593236823/ref=sr_1_1?crid=21QIM1WS2PIME&dchild=1&keywords=self+to+lose+self+to+find+marilyn+vancil&qid=1598722464&sprefix=Self+to+lose+Self+to+find%2Caps%2C208&sr=8-1

Marilyn Vancil has studied the Enneagram and its value in Christian spiritual transformation for many years. She is a Certified Enneagram Professional in the Narrative Tradition through Enneagram Worldwide, a certified spiritual director through SoulStream in Abbotsford, BC, and a trained life coach through Coach Training Alliance. She has also completed coursework on the Enneagram at Loyola University and the Deep Coaching Institute.

Marilyn facilitates workshops and retreats on the Enneagram, focusing on how it can be used to deepen one’s life with God and improve relationships. She practices spiritual direction and coaching from Seattle where she enjoys life with her husband, Jeff.

My Thoughts...

You are interested  in Enneagram then you are going to find this book very helpful.

This is a book that is so full of great insights and the information is easy to understand.

I really was thrilled to read and explore this one.

I gave this book 4 stars and I recommend this one.

The Mary Reader received this book from the publisher for review. A favorable review was not required and all views expressed are our own.