Books like Outside the Frame — picked by fans

I loved Lioness because it took such incredible inner strength for the daughters of Zelophehad to stand before Moses, as judge, and argue their case for equal rights for women regarding inheritance laws.

The characters and time period became so real to me that I read through this novel series, following the daughters to Canaan. The author spun a fiction tale around the biblical account and filled it with deep historical background, plus touched on the emotional core of Mahlah and her sisters.

I love Britton’s writing, too; it reminds me of Joyce Landorf’s fiction style.   

I attended a Bible study where the male leader had the “Marys” in the New Testament mixed up. Once home, I sorted the women out. It can be confusing.

Such as, there are two different accounts of women anointing Jesus’ feet and wiping them with their hair—Mary from Bethany and an unnamed sinner woman. Salome (Virgin Mary’s sister) is sometimes called Mary. There were three Marys at the tomb. 

In Women Who Followed Jesus, author Dani Daley Mackall dramatizes nine women (including four Marys) in narrative (historical fiction) accounts of their encounters with Jesus. Before each woman’s story are scriptures. After each first-person biblical account are questions for reflection and a prayer.

This book clarified the women and gave insight into how they may have felt. I also learned about Jewish customs because of the deep research. 

As a journalist, author Shannon Bream did not disappoint by applying her skills to deep research of the 16 women she wrote about in this nonfiction book.

I have studied the Bible nearly my entire life and hadn’t realized Hagar was the first person to see an angel and the first to give God a name – El Ro-i, “the God of seeing.” Bream sets this book up in an unusual manner by pairing two women per chapter. Very unique!

After my poetry book about Bible women released, people kept asking if I had read The Women of the Bible Speak. (Our titles are even similar.) I had not read her book. (It is common to not read what you are writing about so as not to be influenced.)

Once I read Bream’s book, it was evident why people saw mine as a companion. I am a fan now,… show more.

Francine Rivers has always been a master at writing biblical fiction.

As a teen my daughter read many of Rivers’s novels. But I never took the time to do so until another best-selling author recommended to me A Lineage of Grace. It is a collection of short stories, nearly the length of novellas, following five women in the lineage of Jesus Christ. 

The story that captured me most was Tamar’s. I had never thought about her viewpoint as a Canaanite, or why she went to the extreme measure she did, pretending to be a prostitute, to hold her father-in-law Judah to his promise and bare his children.

I love books that make me see something on a slant, from a different viewpoint. There are also Bible study questions at the end of each woman’s story.

James Kugel, a professor at Harvard and then Bar Ilan University in Israel, has been writing for years on how the Hebrew Bible was read and understood in antiquity. How to Read the Bible will bring you on a remarkable journey through time. Kugel selectively goes through the Hebrew Bible, contrasting how those in antiquity read, understood, and interpreted biblical stories with how modern scholars do. The book is long, and can be read in sections. Kugel’s discussions of both the academic study of the Bible and the way he understands the Bible as both a critic and an Orthodox Jew, are outstanding.

The true identity of Diana Tutton remains uncertain. She published three idiosyncratic novels in England in the 1950s, all of which have now fallen into obscurity. Of those, Guard Your Daughters is the best: it describes a loving family dedicated to protecting the children’s mother, whose poor health has led to an insular, overly sheltered lifestyle for her many daughters. Each of the girls is distinct and vividly drawn by Tutton, who has a keen eye for the traditions, tensions, and excitement of siblings in their teenage years. Over the course of the novel, the sisters gradually forge more connections with the outside world and discover not only their own larger desires but also the hidden truth of their family life.

There are many books for kids who would like to learn Latin but this charmingly illustrated book, also set in Roman Britain, is one of the most accessible, especially for children in primary school.

The Bible, by committee. Well, sure. Provided we can leave to others—or maybe just to each individual reader—the problem of deciding which parts are the history, which the myth, and which seem to be, let’s just say, imaginatively conceived (and which of these can claim the firmest purchase on the Truth we should probably also leave to the reader), the Good Book remains the deconstructed prototype for the kind of literary braid we’re talking about, the all-time album of mirrors, fashioned from pretty much all the same genres we still write in—poetry, philosophy, allegory, parable, vignette, epistolary, horror, and IKEA instruction manual.

Regarding the blend of the natural and supernatural, the moment I’ve been looking at with students recently—this for a class I’ve offered on the subject of mental health and literature—is the meeting of Jesus and the Gerasene Demoniac,… show more.

The MacArthur Study Bible presents some of the clearest exposition I have seen. It is the first commentary I use when developing Bible studies or sermons. The commentary was written by John MacArthur and his students at the seminary. I have been using it for 15 years of pastoral ministry and even if I have disagreed with an interpretation, I could see why it was reached and what hermeneutic they used. There are also very helpful charts and maps. The book introductions are helpful, especially if you preach or teach verse by verse and begin at the beginning of a book. There are helpful chronologies of the patriarchs, judges, kings, and profits.

I couldn’t put this book down! Anything Judas, in my mind, is interesting. I believe Judas is the most misunderstood of all the disciples, and this novel does a great job of telling the story from his own perspective.
Written in 1977, it was definitely ahead of its time. It was published shortly after a papyrus document called the Gospel of Judas was discovered near Beni Mazar in Egypt.

Although the novel confirmed some of what I already knew about Judas—e.g., that he was more of a victim than a villain—I also learned a lot about the politics and daily life of the era Jesus and the disciples lived in. This novel is truly remarkable, and Taylor Caldwell is one of the best writers I have ever read.