The best books about missionaries

In 1960s Kentucky, Susanna Braden’s caught between protecting her younger siblings from her mother’s perniciousness and other lurking dangers, and battling the growing love she feels for her best friend, Calvin. But when family secrets emerge that threaten to destroy her carefully cultivated illusion of safety and Calvin is deployed to Vietnam in love with someone else, Susanna is forced to reexamine the concepts of love, honor, and forgiveness — and it just may be the key to redemption for them all.

For fans of Sue Monk Kidd, Wally Lamb, and Kristin Hannah, four-time award winner A Whisper of Smoke delivers a "beautiful, heart-wrenching story” that "reminds us how exciting, beautiful and painful growing up really is."

In a time where Pastor Jon Stevens feels like he has lost his hope... One Divine Encounter, will change his life. One mistake that started with A simple flower, will begin to unravel history. And one spark will illuminate the way home.

Picture Quantum Leap meets Back to the Future saturated in Biblical History and Christian truths.

Through the 150-year saga of the Lin clan, Shanghai Faithful vividly dramatizes the remarkable religious evolution of the world’s most populous nation. This book is both a family memoir and a chronicle of the astonishing spread of Christianity in China. The depiction of five generations of the Lin family, buffeted by history’s crosscurrents and personal strife, brings to life an epoch that is still unfolding.

The spirit of aloha is found in Hawaii’s fresh ocean air, the flowers, the trade winds…the natural beauty that smoothes the struggles of daily life. In 1922 Honolulu, unhappy in the adoptive family that raised her, Dolores searches for that spirit early on. At sixteen, she marries Manolo. His large Portuguese family embraces her, but when his drinking leads to physical abuse, only his relative Alberto comes to her rescue—and sparks a new passion within Dolores. After the Pearl Harbor attack, Dolores flees to California. Both men follow—Manolo’s drinking problems continue and Alberto’s begin. Outraged, Dolores doubts her feelings for Alberto. Is he only going to disappoint her, as Manolo has? Or is Alberto the embodiment of the aloha spirit she’s been seeking? 

John Muir, America’s foremost wild lands preservationist, lived a large life. He changed the maps of America, and how we see ourselves in the American landscape. Most people associate him with California’s Yosemite. But Muir made seven trips to Alaska over a 20-year period, 1879-99, during which he explored tidewater glaciers by foot and canoe, befriended indigenous Tlingits, and returned home with a renewed commitment to speak and act on behalf of wilderness and beauty – to protect every acre he could. In short, the glaciers of Alaska changed Muir, and Muir in turn changed America.

The United States was made in Britain. For over a hundred years following independence, a diverse and lively crowd of emigrant Americans left the United States for Britain. From Liverpool and London, they produced Atlantic capitalism and managed transfers of goods, culture, and capital that were integral to US nation-building. In British social clubs, emigrants forged relationships with elite Britons that were essential not only to tranquil transatlantic connections, but also to fighting southern slavery. As the United States descended into Civil War, emigrant Americans decisively shaped the Atlantic-wide battle for public opinion. 

Blending the histories of foreign relations, capitalism, nation-formation, and transnational connection, Stephen Tuffnell compellingly demonstrates that the United States’ struggle toward independent nationhood was entangled at every step with the world’s most powerful empire of the time. With deep research and vivid detail, Made in Britain uncovers this hidden story and presents a bold new perspective on nineteenth-century trans-Atlantic relations.

This is a historical novel based on the life of Zheng Yi Sao, the legendary 19th-century Chinese prostitute who became the most powerful pirate in history. Sold as a child to a floating brothel, kidnapped by pirates, and forced to marry their leader, she must survive a world of violence, treachery, and greed, until she faces a choice between two things she never dreamed might be hers: power or love. Exhaustively researched, her story has never been fully told until now.

Both My Sons opens in media res style—the plot is already in progress when the story begins. A band of militia riders interrupts the Saturday morning Lancaster market by throwing down their scalped and murdered leader—Bod Greenywalt, the favorite son of the immigrant. How did it happen? Who is Bod? Who is Greenywalt? How did he become a member of the outlawed and despised Mennonite group in Europe and then a wildly successful mill owner in the New World? How did this faithful Christian end up fathering sons by two mothers, who will never let him lead a life of peace? Can he join the frontier settlers in celebrating his murdered son as a hero, when the boy has betrayed Greenywalt’s deepest beliefs?

We are living the chaos of cybersex, impersonal sex, adultery, prostitution, pornography, incest, gender confusion, sexual dysfunction, and sexual dissatisfaction in marriage. Undefiled offers readers an opportunity to find spiritual, relational, and sexual maturity. Sexual impurity creates a cycle of destruction, that comes from a serious misunderstanding of our sexuality. Yet real change is possible, where there is sexual redemption with sexual and relational maturity.

When sexuality is practiced as our Creator designed it, we not only grow relationally and sexually but we draw ourselves closer to God. Spiritual, relational, and sexual maturity must be brought together for restoration after the damage brought by unfaithfulness. There is hope for real change and true intimacy is available. The sexually broken can be undefiled and find a new level of intimacy.

In a remote town in the desert Southwest, a house appears to remodel itself, a cemetery is rearranged, and an ancient valley is suddenly haunted by a glimmering visitor. Called in to “clean” the unwanted dead, ghost expert Philip Pratt finds himself in territory at once familiar and unfamiliar, stalking the spirit of Emma Rose Finnis—a ghost who has come to this harsh place to see just how far a soul can go. In a cat-and-mouse game between the living and the dead, Pratt and Emma must each confront how far they are willing to travel into this stunning landscape, already filled with the people and spirits of the past. As their encounters become more and more dangerous, the living and the dead each become more certain they must control their own destinies—even if it means risking their souls.