Religious Biographies

By the end of his brief life Ulrich Zwingli would change the religious landscape of his home and the world. It wasn't until the last few years of his life that he became a reformer. He fought for truth and righteousness with his mind and pen, he fought for lost souls to hear the good news of Jesus Christ, and at the age of 47, as an army chaplain, he was killed on the battlefield. The Shepherd Warrior, Ulrich Zwingli, fought the good fight. With his last strength he voiced his victory: "They can kill the body but not the soul!"

After colliding with a semi-truck, Don Piper died and went to heaven. Ninety minutes later he returned to life on earth. After years of silence, he is now sharing his life-changing story.

Benedict XVI: A Life offers insight into the young life and rise through the Church’s ranks of a man who would become a hero and a lightning rod for Catholics the world over. Based on countless hours of interviews in Rome with Benedict himself, this two-volume biography is the definitive record of the life of Joseph Ratzinger and the legacy of Pope Benedict XVI. This first volume follows his early life, from his days growing up in Germany and his conscription into the Hitler Youth during WWII to his career as an academic theologian and eventual archbishop of Munich.

When she was 18 years old, Carolyn Jessop was coerced into an arranged marriage with a total stranger - a man 32 years her senior. Merril Jessop already had three wives. But arranged plural marriages were an integral part of Carolyn's heritage: She was born into and raised in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), the radical offshoot of the Mormon Church.

The revealing and inspiring memoir of a woman forced into polygamous marriage in FLDS Church and her brave struggle to protect others from the same fate. Rebecca Musser grew up in fear, concealing her family's polygamous lifestyle from the "dangerous" outside world. Covered head-to-toe in strict, modest clothing, she received a rigorous education at Alta Academy, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints' school headed by Warren Jeffs.

In February of 2009, Shannon and Paul Morell were especially eager to bring a new life into the world. After years of infertility and miscarriages, they had, in 2006, finally scrimped and saved enough to have in vitro-fertilization. The result? Two dear daughters had been born, and six precious embryos had been frozen. They counted the days until they could transfer the six remaining embryos. But then the clinic called....

Two years after Marilyn loses her fiancé to cancer, she becomes a Christian and marries Henry, joining him in a worldwide ministry that leaves little time for family or personal reflection. When her old grief resurfaces, she’s shocked by the tsunami that rips through their lives. Intensive counselling fails to bring healing, and when Henry writes a public letter that decimates their churches and spins them out of fellowship—and lifelong employment—she faces an emotional and spiritual reckoning that challenges her to the core.

Recruited into the fundamentalist Quiverfull movement as a young wife, Tia Levings learned that being a good Christian meant following a list of additional life principles—a series of secret, special rules to obey. Being a godly and submissive wife in Christian Patriarchy included strict discipline, isolation, and an alternative lifestyle that appeared wholesome to outsiders. Women were to be silent, “keepers of the home.” A Well-Trained Wife is an unforgettable memoir about a woman's race to save herself and her family and details the ways that extreme views can manifest in a marriage.

In the decades since his execution by the Nazis in 1945, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor, theologian, and anti-Hitler conspirator, has become one of the most widely read and inspiring Christian thinkers of our time. Now, drawing on extensive new research, Strange Glory offers a definitive account, by turns majestic and intimate, of this modern icon.

Considered one of the greatest novels of simple and triumphant religious faith to be published in the 20th century, how the The Song of Bernadette came to be written is an inspirational - even miraculous - story in its own right. In June 1940, famed Austrian author Franz Werfel and his beautiful wife, Alma Mahler, were on a desperate flight across France, seeking to escape certain death at the hands of the Nazi invaders. Franz had written many articles and given many radio speeches denouncing their tyranny.

What do Abraham Lincoln, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Louis Pasteur, Frederick Douglass, Florence Nightingale, and John D. Rockefeller, Sr., all have in common? They all changed the world - and they were all Christians. Now the little-known stories of faith behind 12 influential people of history are available in one inspiring volume. They Were Christians reveals the faith-filled motivations behind some of the most outstanding political, scientific, and humanitarian contributions of history.

In this true story, Armande Martel, a young nun from Quebec, is arrested by the Germans in 1940 during a stay at her religious order's mother house in Brittany. She spends the war years in a German concentration camp. After her return to Canada, she leaves the Church, finds the love of her life in Montreal, and adopts Lise Dion.

Joni Eareckson is a well-known Christian speaker and author from America, but there was a day when she was a teenage girl in a bathing costume with nothing on her mind but boys, make up, and her beloved horse, Tumbleweed. However, all that changed one morning when an innocent dive turned into a tragic accident. Joni's story is a wonderful testimony to God's grace and power in someone's life.

Jonathan Edwards was just an ordinary American boy but he was different too. The country he lived in wasn't the America of today - but a new world full of adventure and opportunity. Battles and Tomahawks were just some of the thrilling adventures that his family lived through. But Jonathan also loved the small things in life too. In an age of scientific discovery, Edwards saw God's beauty displayed most perfectly through nature. His journals are filled with drawings of plants, animals, and spiders because he knew that each one of them reflected the creativity of its creator.

Mark Bouman recounts the events of his childhood at the hands of his larger-than-life, neo-Nazi father in brilliant, startling detail. From adventure-filled days complete with real-life war games, artillery fire, and tank races to terror-filled nights marked by vicious tirades, brutal beatings, and psychological torture, Mark paints a chilling portrait of family life that is at once whimsical and horrific - all building to a shocking climax that challenges even the broadest boundaries of love and forgiveness.

When Mark McDonough was a teen, a catastrophic fire claimed the lives of his mother and younger brother. It also left Mark with burns on over 65 percent of his body. During a long and painful recovery, his faltering faith in God was strengthened by a remarkable near-death experience. Inspired to pursue a career as a plastic surgeon to help those who suffer as he has, McDonough has overcome numerous other adversities on his journey, including addiction and a stroke.

There are some men in the pages of history, whose greatness no person of common sense thinks of disputing. They tower above the herd of mankind, like the Pyramids, the Parthenon, and the Colosseum, among buildings. Such men were Luther and Augustine, Gustavus Adolphus and George Washington, Columbus and Sir Isaac Newton. He who questions greatness must be content to be thought very ignorant, very prejudiced, or very eccentric. Public opinion has come to a conclusion about them - they were great men.

If you think ghosts are only responsible for hauntings, think again. The Demonologist reveals the grave religious process behind supernatural events and how it can happen to you. Used as a text in seminaries and classrooms, this is one book you can't put down. For over five decades, Ed and Loraine Warren have been considered America's foremost experts on demonology and exorcism. With over 3,000 investigations to their credit, they reveal what actually breaks the peace in haunted houses. Don't miss the Warrens in the new blockbuster movie The Conjuring.

This unique intellectual portrait explores the role of ideas in Lincoln’s life. Guelzo presents Lincoln as a serious thinker deeply involved in the problems of 19th-century thought, including those of classical liberalism, the Lockean Enlightenment, Victorian unbelief, and Calvinist spirituality.

Before May 31, 2008, September Vaudrey's life was beautiful. But on that day, with one phone call from the ER, her whole world - everything she knew and believed - was shaken to the core. Katie, her 19-year-old artist daughter, had been in a car accident and would not survive. How does a family live in the wake of devastating tragedy? When darkness colors every moment, is it possible to find light? Can God still be good, even after goodbye?