Days Of Grace

"Touching and courageous...All of it--the man, the life, the book--is rare and beautiful." COSMOPOLITAN DAYS OF GRACE is an inspiring memoir of a remarkable man who was the true embodiment of courage, elegance, and the spirit to fight: Arthur Ashe--tennis champion, social activist, and person with AIDS. Frank, revealing, touching--DAYS OF GRACE is the story of a man felled to soon. It remains as his legacy to us all.... AN ALTERNATE SELECTION OF THE BOOK-OF-THE-MONTH CLUB

At the beginning of World War II, twelve-year-old Nora Lynch is one of thousands of London children sent away to the safety of the English countryside. Her surrogate family, Reverend and Mrs. Rivers and their daughter Grace, are like no-one she has ever met, offering shelter, affection, and the sister she never had. But Nora is too young and too naïve to understand the cracks beneath the surface of her idyllic new life at the rectory, or the disappointments of the Riverses' marriage. And as her friendship with Grace grows more intense, she aches to become even closer. What happens next is a secret that she keeps for more than fifty years, a secret that she can begin to reveal only when, elderly and alone, Nora knows that she is close to the end. A beautiful meditation on love, friendship, and family, Days of Grace is a stunning debut that brings a tumultuous era to life. Nora tells her story in alternating chapters from the past and present, projecting her childhood nostalgia with a cinematic glow.

"Grace is more than just a story, it's more than just a theology, and it's more than just a powerful force—no, grace is a person, and his name is Jesus. Jesus is the grace of God." — Paul David Tripp There is nothing we can do to earn God's grace—it is a gift. Through 40 daily meditations from his best-selling devotional New Morning Mercies, popular author and speaker Paul David Tripp explores the role grace plays in the everyday life of a Christian. He reminds us that God, in his infinite mercy, can radically transform even the weakest people by the life-changing power of his grace through his Son, Jesus Christ.

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK A “thoroughly captivating biography” (The San Francisco Chronicle) of American icon Arthur Ashe—the Jackie Robinson of men’s tennis—a pioneering athlete who, after breaking the color barrier, went on to become an influential civil rights activist and public intellectual. Born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1943, by the age of eleven, Arthur Ashe was one of the state’s most talented black tennis players. He became the first African American to play for the US Davis Cup team in 1963, and two years later he won the NCAA singles championship. In 1968, he rose to a number one national ranking. Turning professional in 1969, he soon became one of the world’s most successful tennis stars, winning the Australian Open in 1970 and Wimbledon in 1975. After retiring in 1980, he served four years as the US Davis Cup captain and was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1985. In this “deep, detailed, thoughtful chronicle” (The New York Times Book Review), Raymond Arsenault chronicles Ashe’s rise to stardom on the court. But much of the book explores his off-court career as a human rights activist, philanthropist, broadcaster, writer, businessman, and celebrity. In the 1970s and 1980s, Ashe gained renown as an advocate for sportsmanship, education, racial equality, and the elimination of apartheid in South Africa. But from 1979 on, he was forced to deal with a serious heart condition that led to multiple surgeries and blood transfusions, one of which left him HIV-positive. After devoting the last ten months of his life to AIDS activism, Ashe died in February 1993 at the age of forty-nine, leaving an inspiring legacy of dignity, integrity, and active citizenship. Based on prodigious research, including more than one hundred interviews, Arthur Ashe puts Ashe in the context of both his time and the long struggle of African-American athletes seeking equal opportunity and respect, and “will serve as the standard work on Ashe for some time” (Library Journal, starred review).

"Grace is shorthand for God wishing us well." Here is a one-year guide through the winsome writings of Lewis B. Smedes, whose understanding of how we experience the grace of God in the midst of a difficult world has encouraged and strengthened the faith of countless Christians. Each day you'll read a Scripture and a brief passage about the daily living out of a relationship with the great God of the universe. An idea at the end of each day's reading will help you to respond to God in prayer and reflection. As you make your way through the year, you'll find yourself remarkably refreshed as you're reminded that God is for you and longs to fill your days with grace.

DAYS OF GRACE tells the story of Ian Johns, a bleary and depressed thirty-one-year-old "professional student," who, in the throes of an early-life crisis brought on by his mother's untimely death from cancer, quits law school after surviving the rigors of its proverbially arduous first year to become an itinerant without a plan. With a voice and sensibility that can be likened to Lethem, Sedaris, Coupland and Kerouac, the book is unabashedly picaresque and Neo-Beat, written in a roman a clef and journalistic style which has been described as "modified stream-of-consciousness." It is at times dark and bittersweet but is relentlessly tinged with bright-sharp edges of humor. As we go forward with Ian on his travels and go back into the near-past to sit at his mother's deathbed in his childhood home, viewing the world through his admittedly cracked prism, we come away having learned something universal about ourselves, Y2K America and maybe even mortality itself.

In this remarkable tale of hope and survival, Hannah Luce tells how, as the sole survivor of a terrible plane crash, she came to grips with her faith: “a calamitous, fascinating memoir, written with surprising spiritual sophistication” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). On May 11, 2012, a small plane carrying five young adults, en route to a Christian youth rally, crashed in a Kansas field, skidding 200 yards before hitting a tree and bursting into flames. Only two survived the crash: ex-marine Austin Anderson, who would die the next morning from extensive burns, and his friend Hannah Luce, the daughter of Teen Mania founder and influential youth minister Ron Luce. This is Hannah’s story. In Fields of Grace, Hannah details the investigation of her faith, her coming-of-age as the dutiful daughter of Evangelical royalty, her decision to join her father’s ministry outreach to teens, and her miraculous survival and recovery following the accident. It also serves as a tribute and testament to the lives of the dear friends who perished in the catastrophic plane crash and reveals how their memory continues to inspire all that she does. Here is the “riveting personal account” (Booklist) of a girl who grew up as the daughter of one of the most influential evangelical leaders of our time, who questioned her early religious convictions somewhere along the way and who, from the embers of that doomed plane ride, finally found her faith.

There are two fundamentally different approaches to living life in relation to God. The first approach is to jump up and down, trying to impress Him. The second is to relate to Him on the basis of grace. hough the first approach makes sense at first glance (since it is the way we get noticed), it comes with a whole load of baggage: guilt, shame, fear, pride. The way of grace is more subtle but is the way God actually has chosen to work. Grace is like breathing clean air. When you are surrounded by grace you flourish. Graceless living is like breathing carbon monoxide. You may not even realize it is killing you spiritually until it is too late. These reflections are easy to read, and often entertaining. But they are full of wisdom - and will show you how to live in the grace of Christ, day by day.