Spanish Peaks Library District

"When ten-year-old Birdie's dad is sent back to Iraq, she makes a deal with God to bring him home safely, while dealing with a new school where she finds it hard to make friends especially when she could use one" --

Miguel sees the results of his father's faith and generosity when, although his own family is facing the oncoming winter with threadbare clothing, a leaky roof, and no firewood, Papa gives away the pastries he has baked.

"The majority of Romans were a deeply religious people, though their religion took on forms most of us in the modern world would find unfamiliar. One of the most popular systems of belief among Roman as well as Greek thinkers was Stoicism. Although not strictly a religion Stoicism had many religious aspects including an understanding of the universe as a materialistic, yet continuous and living whole in which Stoics view both the gods and a supreme...

The ground is moving. The death of George Floyd at the hands of police in the summer of 2020 shocked the nation. As riots rocked American cities, Christians affirmed from the pulpit and in social media that "black lives matter" and that racial justice "is a gospel issue." But what if there is more to the social justice movement than those Christians understand? Even worse: What if they've been duped into preaching ideas that actually oppose the Kingdom...

"Mormonism is one of the world's fastest growing religions, doubling its membership every 15 years. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the formal denomination of the Mormon church) is now 10 million strong, with more than half of its membership coming from outside the United States. More than 88 million copies of The Book of Mormon have been printed, and it has been translated into more than 50 languages. Mormons in America tells the...

"Plenty of young men had noticed Emma's smooth auburn hair and her quick intellect, but at twenty-six years of age, she was still single, much to the bewilderment of her Amish community. "She's just too picky," they said, and she supposed they were right. Most did not know that she had been in love once, and had wound up brokenhearted. When she becomes a nanny for an English (non-Amish) family along the coast of North Carolina, her world opens up...

Melissa Keiser returns to Anna Maria Island, Florida, where she had been the target of middle school bullies, to find some changes, but that relationships--with the boy she still has a crush on, a new friend, and her brother--have consequences.

At the height of the Incan empire, a girl called the Ugly One because of a disfiguring scar on her face, seeks to have the scar removed and instead finds a life path as a shaman.

"Once a year, each of Ruby's relatives prepares a special dish to share at their family reunion. Daddy calls it their "signature dish"-and Ruby wants one of her own. She wanders through the bustling kitchen looking for inspiration. As she watches Pop-Pop's chicken sizzling in the skillet, Uncle G slicing onions, and Auntie Billie cooking corn on the hot grill, she wonders if she's just too young to have a signature dish. That's when she finds it-...

"What makes a good missionary makes a good spy. Or so thought "Wild" Bill Donovan when he launched a secret new program under the Office of Strategic Services. His recruits, in turn, believed an American victory would help them protect their foreign ministries and expand the kingdom of God. In Double Crossed, historian Matthew Avery Sutton tells the extraordinary story of the entwined roles of spycraft and faith in World War II. Sutton shows how missionaries,...