Books like Deep Fried Trouble — picked by fans

I love all things family and in Play to Win, Author Ja’nese Dixon gives us a look at a family of seven but the parents get a divorce and are divorced twenty years before they remarry. This series shows how a family deals with divorce, co-parenting, business, marriage, relationships, and broken matters. Throughout this entire series, you will see some twists and turns that will shock you, but also teach you the power of forgiving and love. The value is that when you are a part of a family, you become a unit, even when there are moving parts.

When I was seeking God for some things greater than I felt I deserved, I began to search for reading material that could strengthen my faith and help me understand some of the things shared in the Word of God pertaining to faith. Well, the late Dr. Fredrick Price became my go-to-author. In this book, he really dissects some of the greatest stories pertaining to faith found in the Bible and helps his readers to get a full and complete understanding. I am recommending this book because it’s definitely an easy but informative read that you won’t soon forget.

There’s is nothing more calming than a book that brings hope. In this awesome book by Author Ann Marie, you’ll find such a mixture of life, struggles, and love. This book is definitely one of those second-chance books that will cause a reader to understand that your past was never meant to define your future. If you have never read a book by this author, you should definitely try one.

Few books helped me make sense of the collapse of my carefully constructed life more than Falling Upward.

Like many people, I spent decades building an identity—career, success, relationships, beliefs about who I was and who I needed to become. When much of that began to fall away, it felt like failure. Richard Rohr helped me see the possibility that something else might be happening.

What stayed with me was his suggestion that the losses, disappointments, and unravelings we spend so much energy resisting may actually become our greatest teachers. I didn't read this book as a theory. I read it while living it. Again and again, it helped me trust that what felt like falling apart might also be a doorway into something deeper and more true.

Stanislav Grof co-authored The Stormy Search For The Self with his then-wife Christina. It was a follow-up to his earlier work, Spiritual Emergency, which emphasised that this was a global transformation in the understanding of mental illness and included contributions from other professionals in the field. It also indicated that more primitive societies viewed this situation with more sympathy than Western medicine did at the time. It was also the start of inclusion about how other phenomena related to this subject, including drug-induced states and UFOs. Current thought in recent years has also brought into the near-death experience and understanding has linked them all under the umbrella of consciousness studies.

I love Barton’s personal and practical approach to a key cluster of spiritual disciplines in this accessible overview. She explores how to encounter God in Scripture and in prayer, how to practice solitude, self-examination and discernment, how to honor the body and keep sabbath. Individual chapters are framed by an introduction to spiritual formation and book-ended by combining them into a single rule of life. Think of this book as a fresh update of Richard Foster’s classic, Celebration of Discipline. (See her Transforming Center website for more.)

This book on spiritual formation is introductory but still rich enough to reread again and again. Mulholland seamlessly weaves together pastoral theology and psychological insight, but he keeps things accessible and focused on practice. You will see yourself clearly in the mirror with the guided reflection-and-practice exercise at the end of each chapter. Follow this up with A Deeper Journey, which peels away our performances and false pictures of ourselves to find a place of rest in the loving presence of God. Mulholland is a wise and gentle teacher who reveals what we need to know about ourselves to step into a better way to live.

This is the most “how-to” book on the list. Whether we are reflective about it or not, our character will be shaped and our lives transformed into something—the only question is In what way? and For what end? John Stott once said that “Spirituality is not a condition into which we can drift.” Steve’s book teaches you how not to drift through life. 

Steve’s ministry (Leadership Transformations) helps Christian leaders and laypeople live renewed and beautiful lives. This book walks you through a process of self-reflection and intentional choice to create a “rule of life”—an intentional rhythm or pattern of our days that primes us for spiritual growth and attentiveness to God.

If I only had one book I could bring on a deserted island, The Great Work of Your Life, would be that book. It focuses on what is known in the Hindu tradition as one’s “dharma” or our soul’s unique duty or mission we are called to endeavor. Using The Bhagavad Gita—an epic Hindu folktale as an analogy, TGWOYL follows the lives of culturally known (Beethoven, Gandhi, Harriet Tubman, Susan B Anthony) and everyday characters from the author’s life, as an exploration of what it means (and requires) to live one’s dharma in the world. We all know the heroic and courageous sacrifices these well-known icons made, but often we don’t know that they too were faced with paralyzing doubt, setbacks, inner criticism, and a sense of purposelessness amidst their remarkable lives. The book brings these larger-than-life characters down to earth and in essence says, if they could… show more.

Reading High Magick, opened my eyes. Before my formal magickal training, I innately knew that Magick and Witchcraft open a path to access the divinity within. My Wiccan Elder High Priestess recognized this inner sight and chose me for private Magickal lessons with tailored parables in the oral, storytelling Goddess tradition. I didn’t realize I had been learning High Magick. Although structured in a linear, Divine Male perspective, this book offers the same endpoint: Magick is a direct connection to the Divine Source. I have always applied magick to transform trauma into wellbeing and Damien Echols, sentenced to death and later acquitted, did the same. By incorporating magickal practices, he preserved his humanity and safeguarded himself against negativity, thus elevating his awareness to envision his release from prison.