Dinner With A Perfect Stranger

You are Invited to a Dinner with Jesus of Nazareth The mysterious envelope arrives on Nick Cominsky’s desk amid a stack of credit card applications and business-related junk mail. Although his seventy-hour workweek has already eaten into his limited family time, Nick can’t pass up the opportunity to see what kind of plot his colleagues have hatched. The normally confident, cynical Nick soon finds himself thrown off-balance, drawn into an intriguing conversation with a baffling man who appears to be more than comfortable discussing everything from world religions to the existence of heaven and hell. And this man who calls himself Jesus also seems to know a disturbing amount about Nick’s personal life. ………….. "You’re bored, Nick. You were made for more than this. You’re worried about God stealing your fun, but you’ve got it backwards.… There’s no adventure like being joined to the Creator of the universe." He leaned back off the table. "And your first mission would be to let him guide you out of the mess you’re in at work." …………. As the evening progresses, their conversation touches on life, God, meaning, pain, faith, and doubt–and it seems that having Dinner with a Perfect Stranger may change Nick’s life forever.

Six years ago, businessman Nick Cominsky encountered Jesus the old-fashioned way-in a face-to-face meeting. And the Christian life seemed a breeze . . . for a while. But now, having done everything he knows to grow spiritually, he wonders where his closeness with Jesus has gone. Burned out and hopeless, Nick wails his complaints to God during a late-night interstate trip. Then suddenly he runs out of gas-and finds Jesus along the roadside carrying a gas can.

The Perfect Stranger Gift Set What if a stranger knew you better than you know yourself? In these novellas, experience first-person accounts of two young skeptics who encounter Jesus, and his answers to their most challenging and most personal life questions. Dinner with a Perfect Stranger A cynical young businessman, Nick Cominsky, accepts an invitation to dinner with a stranger, thinking it's a prank. What results is a one-on-one encounter with Jesusuthe opportunity of a lifetimeuand a conversation that covers everything from world religions and the afterlife to the Bible and life's purpose. A Day with a Perfect Stranger Already concerned about her shaky marriage to a workaholic, devoted mother Mattie Cominsky is dismayed by her husband's sudden interest in religion. Then an unexpected conversation with a stranger leads her to forever change some of her deepest views about marriage, fulfillment, life, and God.

The conversation continues. What if a stranger knew you better than you know yourself? Exasperated by her husband’s sudden new obsession with Jesus, Mattie Cominsky views an out-of-town business trip as a welcome opportunity to reflect on their marriage—and to decide if it’s time to put an end to this painfully unrewarding relationship. Aboard the plane, Mattie is relieved to find herself seated next to a passenger who shares her scorn for religion. After she confides her husband’s unexpected turn, their conversation soon leads to a fascinating exploration of spirituality, God, and the quest for meaningful connection. Mattie’s skepticism softens under the perceptive insights of this stranger, and she finds herself confronting the unspoken longings of her soul. As his comments touch on personal issues he couldn’t possibly know about, she begins to wonder if she’s misjudged not only Nick but also the God he now claims to believe in.

The only daughter of a European banking dynasty, Raphaella had always been sheltered from the world. Married to a much older American, she was kept in the privacy of great luxury, tended to by servants, watched over by bodyguards. She was the beautiful dark-eyed woman the young lawyer from San Francisco, Alexander Hale, saw sitting alone one misty evening. Before he could approach her, she rushed away into the garden. She was the "perfect stranger" he couldn't forget. When they met again their lives would change forever.

You are Invited to a Dinner with Jesus of Nazareth The mysterious envelope arrives on Nick Cominsky’s desk amid a stack of credit card applications and business-related junk mail. Although his seventy-hour workweek has already eaten into his limited family time, Nick can’t pass up the opportunity to see what kind of plot his colleagues have hatched… The normally confident, cynical Nick soon finds himself thrown off-balance, drawn into an intriguing conversation with a baffling man who comfortably discusses everything from world religions to the existence of heaven and hell. And this man who calls himself Jesus also seems to know a disturbing amount about Nick’s personal life. ………….. “You’re bored, Nick. You were made for more than this. You’re worried about God stealing your fun, but you’ve got it backwards.… There’s no adventure like being joined to the Creator of the universe.” He leaned back off the table. “And your first mission would be to let him guide you out of the mess you’re in at work.” …………. As the evening progresses, their conversation touches on life, God, meaning, pain, faith, and doubt—and it seems that having Dinner with a Perfect Stranger may change Nick’s life forever.

In Roxana Robinson’s lucid and elegant prose, her characters’ inner worlds open up to us, revealing private emotional cores that are familiar in their needs, their secrets, and their longings. These people tell us the truth–not only about themselves, their relationships, and their lives, but about ourselves as well. In “Family Christmas,” a young girl takes a holiday trip to her grandparents’, where the formal atmosphere is shattered by a mysterious and chaotic event that she knows she’s too young to understand but struggles to comprehend. In “Blind Man,” a college professor copes with the onslaught of grief after his daughter’s death. In “The Face Lift,” two college friends renew their bond across a great cultural divide. The sad and hilarious “Assistance” flawlessly details the tragicomic aspects of ageing–seen through the eyes of a daughter-turned-caretaker. The terrors of illness are explored in “The Treatment,” and in “Assez,” a trip to Provence reveals the true volatility of love–and reminds us that we often don’t realize that what we have is enough until it’s gone. A Perfect Stranger powerfully and affectingly examines the complex, intricate network of experiences that binds us to one another. These stories are tender, raw, lovely, and fine–and they reaffirm Roxana Robinson’s place at the forefront of modern literature.

The child he loves. The idea of a child, he's beginning to understand, is where everything will go wrong. William works as a human remains removal specialist, removing stains left by the dead. Whether by a bloody crime scene or a quiet domestic death, William is reminded each day of the frailty of human life. As his fiancée, Julie, nears term with their first child William becomes increasingly desperate for a way to overcome his belief that to birth is to kill. But Mrs. Rose, an elementary school principal and messenger pigeon hobbyist, nurtures William’s depressive outlook and claims to have a way to prove that William’s hesitancy to accept fatherhood is not only natural but necessary. In this novel of impending parenthood, an idealistic teacher recruits a pliant protégé to join her group of Strangers – a devout collection of kindred minds who have dedicated their lives to cultivating a unique idea of perfection. But joining is easier than leaving.