Here are 100 books that Everything Happens for a Reason fans have personally recommended if you like
Everything Happens for a Reason.
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I am a former hospital chaplain. My job was to accompany people through the earliest stages of dealing with crisis, trauma, and grief. In four years, I responded to more than 750 deaths, along with countless car accidents, gunshots, stabbings, miscarriages, stillbirths, violence, and unimaginable abuse. With a front-row seat for the worst of this world, faith became much more complicated. I wrestle every day but still cling to faith amid the spiritual and mental scars.
I know this is a children’s book, but sometimes I need more pictures and less words. This book reminds me that God is close, tender, and deeply personal, not cold, distant, and demanding. This helps me feel safe to question, wonder, wander, doubt, and believe.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The late, beloved Rachel Held Evans answers many children's first question about God in this gorgeous picture book, fully realized by her friend Matthew Paul Turner, the bestselling author of When God Made You.
Children who are introduced to God, through attending church or having loved ones who speak about God, often have a lot of questions, including this ever-popular one: What is God like? The late Rachel Held Evans loved the Bible and loved showing God’s love through the words and pictures found in that ancient text. Through these pictures from the Bible,…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I am a former hospital chaplain. My job was to accompany people through the earliest stages of dealing with crisis, trauma, and grief. In four years, I responded to more than 750 deaths, along with countless car accidents, gunshots, stabbings, miscarriages, stillbirths, violence, and unimaginable abuse. With a front-row seat for the worst of this world, faith became much more complicated. I wrestle every day but still cling to faith amid the spiritual and mental scars.
I read this book after my heart attack, and it met me in a place of deep vulnerability. I felt like it was written for me… for that time. It made me remember especially the importance of silence and solitude. It played a big part in my healing from the mental and spiritual trauma of my heart attack.
Since its first publication, The Way of the Heart has helped millions of men and women cast off the anger and greed that trouble the world—and find love, compassion, and peace in the heart of God.
Inspired by the ancient teachings of St. Anthony and the Desert Fathers,The Way of the Heart clears before us a spiritual path consisting of three stepping-stones: Solitude (learning not to be alone but to be alone with God); Silence (the discipline by which the inner fire of God is tended and kept alive); and Prayer (standing in the presence of God with the mind…
I am a former hospital chaplain. My job was to accompany people through the earliest stages of dealing with crisis, trauma, and grief. In four years, I responded to more than 750 deaths, along with countless car accidents, gunshots, stabbings, miscarriages, stillbirths, violence, and unimaginable abuse. With a front-row seat for the worst of this world, faith became much more complicated. I wrestle every day but still cling to faith amid the spiritual and mental scars.
I read this book in a season when I was wrestling with that pesky old question, “Where is God when I am suffering?” It challenged me to think deeply about why a loving God allows pain.
Wrestling alongside Lewis helped me feel less alone in my own questions.
“If God is good and all-powerful, why does he allow his creatures to suffer pain?” And what about the suffering of animals, who neither deserve pain nor can be improved by it? The greatest Christian thinker of our time sets out to disentangle these knotty issues. With his signature wealth of compassion and insight, C.S. Lewis offers answers to these crucial questions and shares his hope and wisdom to help heal a world hungering for a true understanding of human nature.
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I am a former hospital chaplain. My job was to accompany people through the earliest stages of dealing with crisis, trauma, and grief. In four years, I responded to more than 750 deaths, along with countless car accidents, gunshots, stabbings, miscarriages, stillbirths, violence, and unimaginable abuse. With a front-row seat for the worst of this world, faith became much more complicated. I wrestle every day but still cling to faith amid the spiritual and mental scars.
I found so much freedom in this book. Richard Rohr put words to things I had long felt but struggled to articulate—that Christ’s presence is not confined to religion, rules, or a distant heaven but woven into everything, here and now.
This book expanded my view of God, shattering the small, transactional faith I had been handed and replacing it with a love big enough to hold all things. Rohr’s words helped me see Christ in the ordinary, in the broken, in myself—and that changed everything.
'One of the most influential speakers in the world' - OPRAH WINFREY
In his decades as a globally recognized teacher, Richard Rohr has helped millions realize what is at stake in matters of faith and spirituality. Yet Rohr has never written on the most perennially talked about topic in Christianity: Jesus. Most know who Jesus was, but who was Christ? Is the word simply Jesus' last name? Too often, Rohr writes, our understanding has been limited by culture, religious squabbling, and the human tendency to put ourselves at the centre.
Hello, I am Jennifer Cramer-Miller—an author, speaker, and joy seeker. Thirty-some years ago, at 22, I had a cozy apartment with my best friend and a promising PR position. Then I was diagnosed with an incurable autoimmune kidney disease, and suddenly, doctors discussed my “quality of life.” At a very young age, life’s uncertainty fueled my will to survive. And I’ve learned that life is a mix of beauty and bummers. So as long as we’re alive, we should appreciate all of it. That’s why I’m drawn to books that illuminate what it means to be a human managing uncertainty, holding onto hope, and finding joy.
There’s something special about Kate Bowler. At 35, diagnosed with cancer, she started questioning our culture of positivity that emphasizes can-do achievement.
Her insights are beautiful, and her buoyant humor is icing on the cake. I feel like we’re soul sisters, my friend Kate and me (we’ve never met). Her words resonate with my belief that life is a mix of beauty and bummers, and sometimes there is even beauty within the bummers. I believe we should show up for life and appreciate all of it. So, I’m drawn to Kate Bowler’s account of how her hard-won uncertainty has shifted her perspective.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The bestselling author of Everything Happens for a Reason (And Other Lies I’ve Loved) asks, how do you move forward with a life you didn’t choose?
“Kate Bowler is the only one we can trust to tell us the truth.”—Glennon Doyle, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Untamed
It’s hard to give up on the feeling that the life you really want is just out of reach. A beach body by summer. A trip to Disneyland around the corner. A promotion on the horizon. Everyone wants to believe that they are headed toward…
Hello, I am Jennifer Cramer-Miller—an author, speaker, and joy seeker. Thirty-some years ago, at 22, I had a cozy apartment with my best friend and a promising PR position. Then I was diagnosed with an incurable autoimmune kidney disease, and suddenly, doctors discussed my “quality of life.” At a very young age, life’s uncertainty fueled my will to survive. And I’ve learned that life is a mix of beauty and bummers. So as long as we’re alive, we should appreciate all of it. That’s why I’m drawn to books that illuminate what it means to be a human managing uncertainty, holding onto hope, and finding joy.
I love love love this book by Delia Ephron. It packs in all my favorite themes and things—heartbreak, hope, a real life rom-com flavor, family bonds, hilarity, grief, and giddy humor.
Delia Ephron is well celebrated for her novels, essays, and screenplays, but this? Wow! When I read her memoir about illness and love, I felt connected to her work in a brand-new way. Deftly weaving life's darkest moments with hope and humor—this book ultimately reminds us to believe in miracles, love our people, live fully, and find joy.
If you pitched a movie about a woman in her seventies, recently widowed, who reconnects with a man she dated in college, leading to a months-long exchange of emails and the pair falling in love fifty years after their first date, the studio exec would say that's too far-fetched. But that's exactly what happened to Delia Ephron, writer and producer, screenwriter of You've Got Mail and bestselling novelist.
When Delia's beloved first husband Jerry died of cancer in 2015, after thirty-five years of marriage, she couldn't think of moving forward without him. But when she wrote a piece about the…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
I am a professor of visual studies from Canada who has always been interested in dream life—although I’ll admit, it took me a long time to treat this domain as a serious research topic (sometimes the somberness of the academy can impede more adventurous pursuits). I created the Museum of Dreams as a place to explore the social and political significance of these visions, which has led to amazing collaborations with institutions, communities, and individuals around the world. I hope this list has inspired you to attend more closely to your own dreams!
This book was my survival guide for facing a serious illness.
I learned so much from the way this self- described “Black lesbian feminist mother lover poet” remade herself in the process of recovering from cancer. Lorde is a prophet of radical transformation. And one of her key tools was her dreams.
She taught us that change comes from looking inward and by giving voice to what one finds there. And the book contains one of the most amazing dreams I’ve ever read: near the end of her life, Lorde dreamt she wanted to take a course in “language crazure”: the study of “the formation and crack and composure of words.”
Moving between journal entry, memoir, and exposition, Audre Lorde fuses the personal and political as she reflects on her experience coping with breast cancer and a radical mastectomy.
A Penguin Classic
First published over forty years ago, The Cancer Journals is a startling, powerful account of Audre Lorde's experience with breast cancer and mastectomy. Long before narratives explored the silences around illness and women's pain, Lorde questioned the rules of conformity for women's body images and supported the need to confront physical loss not hidden by prosthesis. Living as a "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet," Lorde heals and re-envisions herself…
I never liked children’s books, even as a child. I like words more than pictures and I always preferred literature that presents a more expansive view of the world. I favored myth, classics of urban sophistication, and stories about people whose lives were unknown or unfathomable. After nearly seventy years of reading, and as a writer and book reviewer, I now seek fiction that features the elders. Not just the shrewd witch or the wise auntie, but those still reaching for grand passions as well as grappling with the challenges of aging. In literature as in life, youth is often wasted on the young.
Imagine a novel with 80-year-old female protagonists!
And what history these friends have at their classic waterside community. They’ve seen it all – lifelong relationships, betrayals, the bonds of a hard marriage, and the challenges of children. Their commitment to each other is the glue that binds.
I have few friends from early childhood, so I was especially touched by their ability to read each other so well, with that kind of radar unique to old friends, even as late-life challenges threaten to tear them apart.
The masterful story of a lifelong friendship between two very different women with shared histories and buried secrets, tested in the twilight of their lives, set across the arc of the 20th century.
Celebrated children's book author Agnes Lee is determined to secure her legacy-to complete what she knows will be the final volume of her pseudonymously written Franklin Square novels; and even more consuming, to permanently protect the peninsula of majestic coast in Maine known as Fellowship Point. To donate the land to a trust, Agnes must convince shareholders to dissolve a generations-old partnership. And one of those shareholders…
I am a lifelong feminist and have spent my career and life advancing the status of women and girls. I have started two research centres in Canada–one on violence against women and one on women’s health. I continue to work as a researcher in sex and gender science, advocating for health solutions that also advance gender equity. I first questioned gender roles at age 7, when I was assigned dishwashing and my brother garbage management. I have always longed to understand gender injustices and issues such as violence against women, gender pay gaps, women’s rights, or lack thereof, and women’s activism, and these books have helped elucidate, inspire, activate, and challenge me.
This book gripped me with a host of difficult questions and sorrowful insights into women’s health, racism, science, and medical systems in the USA. It reveals the impact of a previously unknown woman, Henrietta Lacks, who died in 1951, and whose cervical cancer cells were taken without her consent, and then, without any acknowledgement, used by researchers and laboratories to develop numerous treatments, drugs, and experiments.
It made me confront hard questions about class, race, gender, medical ethics, profit, and confidentiality. It is a brutal and detailed read, enhanced by the involvement of her family story, as they later discovered the theft and were to confront her immortality. A must-read by a plucky author.
With an introduction by author of The Tidal Zone, Sarah Moss
Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. Born a poor black tobacco farmer, her cancer cells - taken without her knowledge - became a multimillion-dollar industry and one of the most important tools in medicine. Yet Henrietta's family did not learn of her 'immortality' until more than twenty years after her death, with devastating consequences . . .
Rebecca Skloot's fascinating account is the story of the life, and afterlife, of one woman who changed the medical world for ever. Balancing the beauty and drama…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
For almost 20 years, I worked in public and private schools, first teaching with the Peace Corps in Niger and finally in a public high school in New Jersey. For a while, I didn’t feel I knew how to teach. I struggled to reach American teens. I thought they had attitude—and were nasty and lazy. I didn’t want to be in the classroom. But then matters turned around and I began to see how I could make a difference in their lives, enjoying the time I spent with them, and shaping them into decent, hardworking types. And, in the process, they all learned some French—and respected me.
This tearjerker book made me want to get back to the classroom to make students feel as strongly about me as they had about David.
The author visits former students to find out how he impacted their lives. He has cancer and marital issues, but it doesn’t stop him for being positive and grateful about his encounters with students he taught in high school.
On his travels throughout the country, he slept on their couches, broke bread with them, and conversed with them for hours. He came to the conclusion that his life had been richer through knowing and guiding them into people he was proud of.
Through this book, I discovered the generosity of spirit that exists among educators as they create communities in classrooms that encourage growth and learning.
In this “beautiful, heartfelt, and ultimately important story about love, kinship, gratitude, and miracles” (Elizabeth Gilbert, #1 New York Times bestselling author), a beloved high school English teacher with terminal brain cancer undertakes a cross-country journey to reunite with his former students in order to find out if he made a difference and discovers what is truly important in life along the way.
David Menasche lived for his work as a high school English teacher. His passion inspired his students, and between lessons on Shakespeare and sentence structure, he forged a unique bond with his kids, buoying them through personal…
