Recommended Reading
Looking for more great books to inspire, challenge, & entertain you? Here are some great books to add to your reading list.
Non-Fiction
Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters by Abigail Shrier
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2021 BY THE TIMES AND THE SUNDAY TIMES
Until just a few years ago, gender dysphoria—severe discomfort in one’s biological sex—was vanishingly rare. It was typically found in less than .01 percent of the population, emerged in early childhood, and afflicted males almost exclusively. But today whole groups of female friends in colleges, high schools, and even middle schools across the country are coming out as “transgender.” These are girls who had never experienced any discomfort in their biological sex until they heard a coming-out story from a speaker at a school assembly or discovered the internet community of trans “influencers.” Unsuspecting parents are awakening to find their daughters in thrall to hip trans YouTube stars and “gender-affirming” educators and therapists who push life-changing interventions on young girls—including medically unnecessary double mastectomies and puberty blockers that can cause permanent infertility.
Abigail Shrier, a writer for the Wall Street Journal, has dug deep into the trans epidemic, talking to the girls, their agonized parents, and the counselors and doctors who enable gender transitions, as well as to “detransitioners”—young women who bitterly regret what they have done to themselves.
Free to Believe: The Battle Over Religious Liberty in America​
by Luke Goodrich
2019 Book of the Year - The Gospel Coalition (Public Theology and Current Events)
2019 Book of the Year - WORLD Magazine (Understanding America)
A leading religious freedom attorney, veteran of multiple Supreme Court battles, helps people of faith understand religious liberty in our rapidly changing culture--why it matters, how it is threatened, and how to respond with confidence and grace.
Many Americans are concerned about rising threats to religious freedom. They feel the culture changing around them, and they fear that their beliefs will soon be marginalized as a form of bigotry. Others, younger Christians in particular, are tired of the culture wars, and they wonder whether courtroom battles are truly worthwhile, or even in line with the teachings of Jesus. Luke Goodrich offers a reasoned, balanced, gospel-centered approach to religious freedom. He applies biblical understanding to a number of the most hot-button cultural issues of our day. He also offers practical steps Christians can take to respond to religious freedom conflicts in an informed, responsible, and graceful way.
Fiction
Jewelvaria
by Shalom Goodrich
Laurie and her friends are transported to a magical world, where an evil sorceress tried to steal the Crown of Life--which gives its owner all power over the land of Jewelvaria. But the sorceress dropped the crown, scattering the jewels across the land. So Laurie and her friends embark on a quest to find the jewels before the sorceress does. Along the way, they meet dragons, warriors, ogres, gnomes, and even a boy stolen from the human world--all in the hope of restoring life to Jewelvaria.
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"This freshman novel is a charming story from a young and talented author. Her characters go on a wild and hair-raising adventure, pulled by magic from their ordinary lives and cast into the realm of Jewelvaria, where the Queen's evil sister has wrongfully taken power. Our heroes face tests and trials and meet fantastic and terrible creatures in their quest to right the wrongs of this amazing new place. Shalom Goodrich is an up-and-coming author, and I feel certain I'll be lucky to own a copy of her very first publication. She's one to watch!" -- Maria Keffler