Helen Plum Library

"A mesmerizing debut novel set in northern Texas about two sisters who discover an unsettling secret about their father, the head pastor of an evangelical megachurch, that upends their lives and community-a story of family, identity, and the delicate line between faith and deception. Luke Nolan has led the Hope congregation for more than a decade, while his wife and daughters have patiently upheld what it means to live righteously. Made famous by...

The story of five best-selling novels beloved by evangelicals, the book industry they built, and the collective imagination they shaped Who are evangelicals? And what is evangelicalism? Those attempting to answer these questions usually speak in terms of political and theological stances. But those stances emerge from an evangelical world with its own institutions-institutions that shape imagination as much as they shape ideology. In this unique exploration...

The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it -- from garden seeds to Scripture -- is calamitously transformed on African soil

"It's the week before her wedding, and all of Eliza's meticulous planning is about to pay off. She's become the exact type of woman who would marry into the prominent blue-blooded Walker family--Ivy League credentials, a high-powered PR job and a designer-label wardrobe. But as the big day approaches, secrets from Eliza's past attendance at an Evangelical college start to throw her true motives into question. Who exactly is Eliza Bennet and what does...

A Jamaican woman leaves her daughter behind to immigrate to New York, where the happier life she expected is difficult to find as an undocumented worker -- When Patsy gets her long-coveted visa to America, she looks forward leaving Pennyfield, the beautiful but impoverished Jamaican town where they were raised. Her plans don't include her overzealous, evangelical mother-- or her own five-year-old daughter, Tru. When Patsy arrives in Brooklyn, she...

"Novelist Aaron Holland Broussard is shattered when his daughter Fannie Mae dies suddenly. As he tries to honor her memory by saving two young men from a life of crime amid their opioid-ravaged community, he is drawn into a network of villainy that includes a violent former Klansman, a far-from-holy minister, a biker club posing as evangelicals, and a murderer who has been hiding in plain sight. Aaron's only ally is state police officer Ruby Spotted...

"Can You See Anything Now?, a debut novel, follows a year in the small town of Trinity where the tragedy and humility of a few reveal the reality of people's motivations and desires. This is a story without veneer, and for readers who prefer reality to sanitized fiction--this book is unsentimental, and yet grace-filled. The characters here are complex and intriguing -- the suicidal painter, Margie, who has been teaching her evangelical neighbor, Etta,...

Decades after the murder of nineteen-year-old college student Karlie Richards, her former roommate, now middle-aged and divorced, becomes obsessed with uncovering the truth amidst online conspiracy theories, speculation and the lingering shadows of the past Days after the dawn of Y2K, beautiful, charismatic twenty-year-old Karlie Richards is found brutally murdered in her campus apartment. Two decades later, those who knew Karlie, and those who just...

"When his father falls ill, Andrés, a professor of public health, returns to his suburban hometown to tend to his father's recovery. Reevaluating his rocky marriage in the wake of his husband's infidelity and with little else to do, he decides to attend his twenty-year high school reunion, where he runs into the long-lost characters of his youth. Jeremy, his first love, is now married with two children after having been incarcerated and recovering...