Looking for a good book

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Please consider my new novel The Joy of the Lord.

It is available on Kindle for $2.99. I wish I could put it up at a promotional price, but I have to wait 30 days after publication to do that and I just released the print version on All Saints’Day.

You can read the first four chapters for free in the preview. I will share the description below.

Regina Marie Andrews spends her days off from school like any typical twelve-year old: meals with her family, playing with friends, and watching television to pass the time. She enjoys her ordinary parents, ordinary brother, and ordinary life.

God in heaven decides His people on earth have suffered in the shadow of the evil one for long enough. He chooses to free a sleepwalking world by sending the archangel, Gabriel, to a child, who will share what she learns about the amazing story of the Incarnation of Christ with the people in her life.

When Regina takes on an amazing mission, God touches the hearts of her family, friends, and enemies and changes their lives forever. Angels and demons battle for the souls of humanity and the past intertwines with the present as the Gospels become alive through the eyes of a young visionary.

A story of faith, challenge, life, sacrifice, and hard choices, The Joy of the Lord will have everyone asking themselves about their own walk with God, thereby growing closer to Him.

Pax Christi
“Mark Andrews”
Like Regina on Facebook
 
vsedriver said:
I’m looking for recommendations for good reading material. I prefer action/adventure/history type books along the line of bernard cornwell’s histories or James Mitchner’s epics. I also like scary type books like Dean Koontz. I like Sci-fi that is more science than magic (fantasy) and mysteries are good too. I’d like to read something set in and around the church too.

But here’s the problem, I don’t want anything anti-catholic. By that I mean where the Church is all bad and all the hierarchy is evil and full of historical myths about the church. I also don’t like that the only ‘good’ catholics portrayed go against the church. And no graphic sex scenes. Liked Game of Thrones until it got pornographic so tossed that one out.

And no Romance Novels. UGH! the one genre I can’t stand at all.

Hopefully all the suggestions will be available on ebook for my kindle. But with the price of books I’m hoping to narrow my search a little with your recommendations. Thanks to all who offer me suggestions!👍
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For your sci-fi I recommend C.S. Lewis Space Trilogy
amazon.com/Space-Trilogy-Perelandra-Hideous-Strength/dp/068483118X

and Michael D. O’Brien’s Voyage to Alpha Centauri (which I just finished).
amazon.com/Voyage-Alpha-Centauri-Michael-OBrien-ebook/dp/B00H4FGGFW/ref=sr_1_1_twi_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1415462731&sr=1-1&keywords=voyage+to+alpha+centauri+by+michael+o%27brien

I also can’t say enough about anything by Michael D. O’Brien. Particularly The Children of Light series (which includes “Father Elijah”,
ignatius.com/promotions/michael-obrien-novels/book-children-last-days.shtml

and a really interesting speculative historical novel “Theolphilos” imagining the recipient of the Gospel of Luke and The Acts as Luke’s uncle. He’s the best contemporary writer of Catholic fiction I’ve read, and I’d grab all I can find by him.
ignatius.com/promotions/michael-obrien-novels/book-theophilos.shtml

For fun/action/adventure etc. my wife and I both love the Odd Thomas series by Dean Koontz, and are anxiously awaiting the finale which comes in January. Koontz is a Catholic, and while these books aren’t heavy on doctrine or anything, nor are they specifically about Catholicism in any way, wherever the Church does come into play, it is always with great respect and love. In fact one of the books does take place with some monks at a monastery. Not for everyone. They have their share of darkness and gore. But it’s brilliantly balanced with Odd’s humility, and his clever and funny speaking skills. His ghosts are a kick too.
deankoontz.com/odd-thomas-series/

My favorite novels dealing with the faith in some way or another are generally from G.K. Chesterton, of whom I’ve enjoyed all his novels, but particularly:
The Man Who Was Thursday
Manalive
The Napoleon of Notting Hill
The Father Brown Mysteries (Collections of short stories)

My best recommendation for Chesterton is to read everything you can get. Fiction, Essays, Non-Fiction, commentary, his biographies on St. Francis and St. Thomas Aquinas, his poetry. Most of which is available in this incredible bundle for kindle readers:
amazon.com/Essential-Chesterton-Collection-works-Illustrated-ebook/dp/B002HRE2KI/ref=sr_1_15?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1415462991&sr=1-15&keywords=g.k.+chesterton+orthodoxy

I promise this, (to anybody who likes to read at ALL). This is the best $2.00 you will ever spend in your life.

and
C.S. Lewis - Once again all his fiction, (even the Chronicles of Narnia books, which were aimed at youngsters)
My personal faves:

The Great Divorce
Screwtape Letters

The Great Divorce maybe being my favorite novel with a spiritual theme ever. It’s like Dante condensed and updated into a one short novel.

Here are some synopses on his adult fiction:
agentintellect.blogspot.com/2008/05/c-s-lewiss-fiction-for-adults.html

The Space trilogy may not be available for Kindle, but it’s worth getting the paperbacks.

Happy, blessed reading.
 
Sci-fi along the lines of the Sharpe series would be the Warhammer 40k series Gaunt’s Ghosts en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaunt’s_Ghosts. I had my doubts about the series because it is based on a tabletop wargame (Warhammer 40k), but it’s actually pretty good.
 
I liked to read Tolkien a lot a few years back, he was a devout Catholic if I recall, you might like his writing. And not just LOTR and The Hobbit, some of his other works are also pretty inspiring, if you don’t mind a little mythology.
 
Have you ever read Asimov’s ‘Foundation’? The first book in the series is genuinely brilliant. Second one’s pretty good too, but it gets a bit worse after that.
Also, Anne McCaffrey’s Pern series is also very good, I used to obsess over it a bit when I was younger 😛 It’s sci-fi (though it’s very fantasy-ish, but technically everything in it is explained scientifically). There are some mature themes but pretty mild, the sort a younger person wouldn’t pick up on.
 
vsedriver said:
I’m looking for recommendations for good reading material. I prefer action/adventure/history type books along the line of bernard cornwell’s histories or James Mitchner’s epics. I also like scary type books like Dean Koontz. I like Sci-fi that is more science than magic (fantasy) and mysteries are good too. I’d like to read something set in and around the church too.

But here’s the problem, I don’t want anything anti-catholic. By that I mean where the Church is all bad and all the hierarchy is evil and full of historical myths about the church. I also don’t like that the only ‘good’ catholics portrayed go against the church. And no graphic sex scenes. Liked Game of Thrones until it got pornographic so tossed that one out.

And no Romance Novels. UGH! the one genre I can’t stand at all.

Hopefully all the suggestions will be available on ebook for my kindle. But with the price of books I’m hoping to narrow my search a little with your recommendations. Thanks to all who offer me suggestions!👍
Click to expand...
Voyage to Alpha Centuari
Great novel written by a Catholic author which explores morality in a Sci-Fi setting 100 years in the future. Very entertaining, very philosophical, very mysterious, and very LONG…like 700 pages. About a Catholic who is aboard a futuristic space ship taking colonists to a planet which supposedly has life on it, Alpha Centauri.
 
If you like sci-fi, I’d highly recommend The Mote in God’s Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. My favorite book of the genre.
 
OP: I’ll throw you a curve ball suggestion: find a book by Charles Dickens that you haven’t yet read and give it a go.

You’ll be surprised at how they are. Stay away from the better known ones.

And, you know, the whole Pop Novelist Series thing just sounds unappealing. The only stuff of this kind that I liked were the John Le Carre books.

Give Charles Dickens a try.
 
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