Books

The big ideas from popular books, without giving the whole thing away. Get the GIST, then decide if you want the REST.

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30 summaries, page 1 of 2

Patrick Ness

A Monster Calls

A thirteen-year-old whose mother is gravely ill is visited at 12:07 by a monster made from a yew tree, who trades three stories for the one truth the boy cannot say.

8 min read
Tiffany D. Jackson

Allegedly

Convicted as a small child of killing a baby, sixteen-year-old Mary finally has a reason to tell what really happened that night.

7 min read
Victoria Aveyard

Broken Throne

Victoria Aveyard's farewell to the Red Queen world: five novellas and a scholar's records that trace a kingdom from its apocalyptic birth to the hard, hopeful work of peace.

Fantasy Fiction
Dystopia
8 min read
Rebecca McLaughlin

Confronting Christianity

Rebecca McLaughlin takes twelve of the hardest objections to Christianity, from science and slavery to suffering and hell, and argues each one points toward faith.

Faith and Spirituality
Philosophy
8 min read
Pierce Brown

Dark Age

Ten years after the revolution, Darrow's army is besieged on Mercury, the Republic's Senate is torn apart and Mars is overrun in the saga's darkest book.

Science Fiction
Politics and History
8 min read
John Piper

Desiring God

John Piper's case for Christian Hedonism: that chasing your deepest joy in God is not selfish but the very thing that honors Him most.

Faith and Spirituality
Philosophy
9 min read
Dane Ortlund

Gentle and Lowly

Dane Ortlund draws on Jesus's own self-description and the Puritans to argue that Christ's deepest heart toward weary sinners and sufferers is tender, eager, unwavering love.

Faith and Spirituality
Mental Health
9 min read
Matthew Vines

God and the Gay Christian

Matthew Vines argues, passage by passage, that Christians who hold the Bible as fully authoritative can also bless committed same-sex relationships.

Faith and Spirituality
Sexuality
9 min read
John Mark Comer

God Has a Name

John Mark Comer walks line by line through Exodus 34:6-7, where God names himself, to show how the God you picture shapes the person you become.

Faith and Spirituality
Philosophy
10 min read
Rice Broocks

God's Not Dead

A campus pastor's brisk, confident tour of the scientific, philosophical and historical case for God, written for seekers, believers and skeptics alike.

Faith and Spirituality
Philosophy
9 min read
Pierce Brown

Golden Son

Darrow, a Red miner remade as a Gold, turns his enemies on each other and carries his secret rebellion from Mars into a war across the solar system.

Science Fiction
Politics and History
8 min read
Pierce Brown

Iron Gold

Ten years after the revolution, its hero, its victims and its exiles discover what freedom really costs.

Science Fiction
Dystopia
7 min read
Pierce Brown

Light Bringer

A beaten Darrow crosses the Solar System to find allies while his rival Lysander reaches for a crown.

Science Fiction
Dystopia
8 min read
Rice Broocks

Man, Myth, Messiah

Rice Broocks argues from history that Jesus was no myth and no mere man, which leaves only one answer: the Messiah.

Faith and Spirituality
Ancient History
8 min read
Pierce Brown

Morning Star

Broken by a year in the dark, a slave-born revolutionary rises again to lead a solar-system-wide war against the tyrants who rule it in the finale of the Red Rising trilogy.

Science Fiction
Space Exploration
8 min read
Karen M. McManus

One of Us Is Lying

Five students walk into detention and only four come out alive, each with a secret the dead boy was about to publish, in Karen M. McManus's fast, addictive teen mystery.

7 min read
Preston Sprinkle

People to Be Loved

A New Testament scholar keeps the traditional Christian view of sex and marriage while telling the church its treatment of gay people has to change.

Faith and Spirituality
Sexuality
8 min read
Victoria Aveyard

Red Queen

In a kingdom split by blood, a poor Red thief discovers she has a power only the ruling Silvers should have, and is hidden at the heart of their court.

Young Adult Fantasy
Dystopia
7 min read
Pierce Brown

Red Rising

A teenage miner on Mars is remade as one of the ruling Golds to bring down the empire that hanged his wife.

Science Fiction
Dystopia
8 min read
Mo Isom

Sex, Jesus, and the Conversations the Church Forgot

A former LSU goalkeeper tells her own sexual story to argue that the church's silence about sex has failed a generation, and that sex is God's idea.

Faith and Spirituality
Sexuality
5 min read
Suzanne Collins

Sunrise on the Reaping

Sixteen-year-old Haymitch Abernathy is forced into the fiftieth Hunger Games and decides to fight the arena itself, in Suzanne Collins's prequel about propaganda and the cost of defiance.

7 min read
Gregory Koukl

Tactics

Greg Koukl's friendly playbook for talking about Christian convictions by asking good questions, spotting weak arguments, and leaving a 'stone in someone's shoe' instead of starting a fight.

Faith and Spirituality
Philosophy
10 min read

The Book of Enoch

The ancient Jewish apocalypse that tells of the fallen Watchers, the giants, Enoch's journeys through heaven and the coming judgment by the Son of Man.

Faith and Spirituality
Ancient History
9 min read
John Marco Allegro

The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross

A Dead Sea Scrolls scholar argues Christianity began as a mushroom-eating fertility cult, and pays for it with his career.

Faith and Spirituality
Ancient History
8 min read