Social Issues Fiction

Lia and Diana are the "it girls" of Empire Hill High. Their lives are perfect . . . until Diana disappears and the rumors start flying. Everyone thinks Diana is a runaway, including the police. Lia is secretly convinced it's all a prank. Then she finds a crushed red rose tied with a candy-cane ribbon where Diana went missing. And next to it, a note: YOU.

As 1947 opens, Eva Cardon is the twenty-four-year-old owner of Washington, D.C.’s, most famous Black-owned restaurant. When her path crosses with Courtland, a handsome white senator from Georgia, both find themselves drawn to one another—but the danger of a relationship between a Black woman and a white man from the South could destroy them and everything they’ve worked for.

Meet Bubble Gum Brain and Brick Brain: two kids with two very different mindsets. Bubble Gum Brain likes to have fun adventures, learn new things, and doesn't worry about making great mistakes. Brick Brain is convinced that things are just fine the way they are and there's not much he can do to change them, so why try?

Carlos Bulosan’s idealism and ambition would seem to position him for certain success in America, even given how young he is when he first makes the journey from the Philippines. However, after arriving in Seattle, employers are far more concerned with his Filipino background than they are with his character. Low-paying jobs - and an uncertain future - remain his daily reality.

Born in an Andean village in Ecuador, Virginia lives with her family in a small, earthen-walled dwelling. In her Indigenous community, it is not uncommon to work in the fields all day, even as a child, or to be called a longa tonta-stupid Indian-by members of the privileged class of mestizos, or Spanish descendants. When seven-year-old Virginia is taken from her home to be a servant to a mestizo couple, she has no idea what the future holds.

When it comes to racial reconciliation, we often ask, “Where do we go from here?” But has it ever occurred to you that the real question is “Why are we still here?” In other words, until we’ve seen the problem of racism correctly—its history, its current effects, and its root causes—we aren’t equipped to head in the right direction. We’ll just keep falling into the same old patterns. The blind will lead the blind, and no one will have the vision to foster real change.

You can be improved....Can you really change your body just by carrying around a coded note? Sure - the advanced technology of a d-mat booth will transport you anywhere instantly, but can it also make you taller, stronger, more beautiful? Clair is pretty sure the offer is too good to be true. But her best friend, Libby, is determined to give it a try, longing for a new, improved version of herself. What starts as Libby's dream turns into Clair's nightmare when Libby falls foul of a deadly trap.

All of Mumbai's possessions and memories come to die at the Deonar garbage mountains. Towering at the outskirts of the city, the mountains are covered in a faint smog from trash fires. Over time, as wealth brought Bollywood knock offs, fast food, and plastics to Mumbaikars, a small, forgotten community of migrants and rag-pickers came to live at the mountains' edge, making a living by reusing, recycling, and reselling.

The book is presented like we are part of the army of God. Before any battle is fought, there is a battle plan. God wants us to be part of the plan. He has the blueprints laid out on the table within his tent and is inviting us to come in and take a look at them with him. He is the captain of the army.

The next generation will face the reality that human activity is changing the planet from one geological epoch to another. From this vantage point—two generations across two geological epochs facing a fundamentally changing planet—Larry Rasmussen writes to his grandchildren. As a grandfather invested in a green earth and climate justice as well as a scholar of faith-based earth ethics, Rasmussen bridges this gap between generations to write to the future about climate change, global citizenship, democracy, and legacy.

Not long ago, J. Matthew Sleeth had a fantastic life and a great job as chief of the medical staff at a large hospital. He was living the American dream - until he saw an increasing number of his patients suffering from cancer, asthma, and other chronic diseases. He began to suspect that the Earth and its inhabitants were in deep trouble. Turning to Jesus for guidance, Sleeth discovered how the scriptural lessons of personal responsibility, simplicity, and stewardship could be applied to modern life. The Sleeths have since sold their big home and given away more than half of what they once owned.

The Hospital Ship is no more, and Yang Wei awakens to find himself at the mercy of monstrous doctors and the tumult of his own mind. Not helping matters, of course, is the Mars Hospital’s Pool of Dead Souls. A ghastly body of water, it traps people in an endless cycle of treatment, death, and resurrection. When an unruly band of patients revolts against this suffering, the Hospital descends into chaos, the likes of which have never been seen before.

Imagine there was never a Laguna Beach, a Newport Harbor, the shimmering Hills. Imagine that your hometown - your school - is the first place XTV descends to set up cameras. Now imagine they've trained them on you. When Jesse O'Rourke gets picked for a "documentary" being filmed at her school in the Hamptons she's tempted to turn down the offer. But there's a tuition check attached to being on the show, and Jesse needs the cash so she can be the first in her family to attend college.

In a culture built on consumption - especially of food - it is easy to forget the poor that Jesus cared so much about. We get caught up in acquiring, buying, eating. Yet paradoxically, the more stuff we consume, the more our spirits wither and starve. A Place at the Table invites you on a journey of self-examination, discipline, and renewed focus on Jesus that will change your life forever. Author Chris Seay is giving you a challenge: eat and drink like the poor for 40 days and donate the money you save on groceries to a charity or project that serves the poor in concrete ways.

The nightmares have returned. Something, or someone, wants to drag Julia Davidson back into a dreadful conflict she assumed was a distant memory. Was this, like before, the echo of another person's dream? Is she responsible to rescue faces she doesn't recognize but can't forget? Do the murky images suggest she has a part to play in whatever ominous events lie ahead?

Daddy's girl Rebecca Muir has long known exactly what she wants to do after high school: attend the prestigious architecture program at Columbia University, 3,000 miles away from her home. But as the end of school nears, things are no longer so clear cut - she's just fallen in love with the perfect guy, Jackson; her dad has gotten a new job in New York, so her whole family is following her to the East Coast; and she's having trouble ignoring her premonition that something terrible is coming. And it soon becomes clear why: Shortly after the move, her father reveals that he's leaving them....

Ethan is living a solid, rational life as a bail bondsman in Florida when he’s compelled to make a seemingly irrational decision: abandon his job and his girlfriend and head south to rescue the daughter of his ex-lover, Michelle. She appears to have been kidnapped by the Mara - vicious street gangs ripping apart the fabric of Central American life - and there’s every reason to believe the girl is dead already. Except for the one that Ethan has been hiding from everyone: she is calling to him in his dreams with three desperate words…I’m still alive.

C2, Zondervan, and World Vision are teaming together on the most ambitious and ecumenical curriculum promoting Christian social responsibility and justice ever conceived. This is a topic that has been building a great deal of buzz within the ranks of Church leadership, but has not yet ignited as an action-based movement among North American Christians. That's 77 million potential Good Samaritans sitting in the pews. And the time is now.

The author of My Beautiful Idol is on a quest to be successful - in a lucrative job at an advertising agency, in ministry work, even in his relationships. And in a futile attempt to control the sources of love and security, he has turned these things into idols he can keep in his soul's back pocket. He pulls the idols out when he feels vulnerable and defenseless, and hides them again when things are going well. But the idols keep failing - even when he turns to his own Christian faith.

The Burden, edited by award-winning Detroit newspaper columnist Rochelle Riley, is a powerful collection of essays that create a chorus of evidence that the burden is real. The Burden expresses the voices of well-known Americans, such as actor/director Tim Reid who compares slavery to a cancer diagnosis, and former Detroit News columnist Betty DeRamus who recounts the discrimination she encountered as a young Black Detroiter in the south.