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Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion
Alain de Botton. Pantheon, $26.95 (320p) ISBN 978-0-307-37910-8

In this highly original and thought-provoking book, philosopher and atheist de Botton (How Proust Can Change Your Life) turns his critical eye to what religion does well and how nonbelievers might borrow from it to improve their own lives, institutions, and practices—without believing in God. For example, de Botton praises religion for satisfying the universal needs for community, comfort, and kindness and for its recognition that all people are imperfect and in need of help and healing. Some of what he suggests seems unattainable: de Botton calls for colleges and universities to shift from preparing students for careers to training them in “the art of living,” something he says religion does well. But other suggestions are more exciting for their plausibility—would not a Day of Atonement, drawn from Judaism, benefit all relationships? De Botton will no doubt annoy militant atheists who believe religion not only has no use but is essentially evil, but his well-reasoned arguments should appeal to the more open-minded nonbeliever. And de Botton is a lively, engaging writer. Agent: Nicole Aragi. (Mar.)

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Legacy Road
Graham Garrison. Kregel, $14.99 trade paper (256p) ISBN 978-0-8254-2671-1

Journalist Wes Watkins is on a roll. His career is taking off, he’s going back to school, and he’s about to propose to the love of his life, Emmy Stewart. When his stagey proposal flops, Wes’s world tilts. Emmy, a National Guard medic, is about to be deployed to Afghanistan. Wes’s mentor, Paul Gavin, persuades Wes to involve his estranged father, Ron, in a class Wes is taking on the Civil War; Ron, who had abandoned his family in favor of alcohol, has Civil War–era letters from a family ancestor. Wes naturally distrusts his father; Emmy has a secret in her past. When Wes finally reads a cache of letters Ron sent him as the younger man was growing up, other secrets emerge. Garrison (Hero’s Tribute) writes in the venerable tradition of Southern fiction, in which the ghosts of the past always play a role. The subtlety and pacing of the characters’ development is convincing. You don’t have to write about the Amish to edify; this is a breath of fresh air. Agent: Terry Burns, Hartline Literary Agency. (Apr.)

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Hiding in Plain Sight
Amy Wallace. Harvest House, $13.99 trade paper (304p) ISBN 978-0-7369-4731-2

Wallace offers a serviceable opener to her Place of Refuge series with this tale of a young police officer who must reckon with her painful past. Ashley Walters has fled Atlanta for the small town of Montezuma, Ga., which has a thriving Mennonite community. She crosses paths with Mennonites when she catches Bradley Yoder, a 13-year-old boy with a complicated history, breaking into a grocery store, which leads her to his family, including handsome uncle Jonathan. Ashley’s personal life, meanwhile, grows complex when a local matchmaker connects her with Patrick James, a counselor who can help Bradley. As the characters make personal discoveries, Montezuma faces the question of redevelopment, a prospect that threatens the Mennonite community. The story has a lot going on and could have used some Mennonite simplicity to concentrate its emotional impact. The romantic triangle keeps the reader turning pages, but the villain is a stretch to believe. (Apr.)

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Cooking the Books
Bonnie S. Calhoun. Abingdon, $14.99 trade paper (304p) ISBN 978-1-4267-3388-8

Sloane Templeton inherits a Brooklyn bookstore after her mother dies, a bookstore that’s in the sights of a realty company that would love to add the land to a development project. Sloane’s urbane psychiatrist boyfriend is an improvement over her ex, a gangbanger type. Her aunt Verlene is a cooking show run amok. Not long after Sloane refuses the offer to sell the store, bad things start happening on her store’s computers, and she must deal with a rare book worth a million dollars. A lot of ingredients get thrown into Calhoun’s plot pot. Her mashup of comedy, urban fiction, romance, and suspense doesn’t hang together, and some of the comedy is juvenile (boogers, anyone?). On the plus side, Sloane Templeton is a fierce, sometimes funny voice. Harder editing would better channel it. Agent: Terry Burns. (Apr.)

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Need You Now
Beth Wiseman. Thomas Nelson, $15.99 trade paper (320p) ISBN 978-1-59554-887-0

Wiseman (Daughters of the Promise series) leaves the Amish category that she does successfully in this well-plotted but middling contemporary set in Texas. Darlene and Brad Henderson and their three children are new arrivals in the small town of Round Top, Tex., where they have fled to an old family farm seeking a psychologically better environment for the teens and preteen. Darlene feels isolated and takes her first job outside the home, working with special-needs children. The job causes Brad to wonder if Darlene is neglecting the family, especially when a crisis occurs with one of the children. Wiseman has written an edgy Christian novel: one of the characters gets drunk, and a powerful extramarital temptation drives action. Other premises are safe ones: some women readers will find Brad’s disapproving attitude toward Darlene’s job either quaint or offensive. Wiseman ambitiously tackles major contemporary issues, but her characters are a little too stereotypical to satisfy. Agent: Mary Sue Seymour. (Apr.)

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Paradise Misplaced
Sylvia Montgomery Shaw. Swedenborg Foundation (Chicago Distribution Center, dist.), $15.95 trade paper (304p) ISBN 978-0-87785-341-1

Shaw has a killer of an opener: “The plan was simple and well-intentioned. So, too, was the murder.” And thereby hangs an ambitious, three-part tale, set during the Mexican revolution of 1910 and centered on the Nyman family, headed by the domineering Gen. Lucio Nyman Berquist, a Swede whose marriage to the Mexican Manuela Vizcarra has produced three sons, a daughter, fabulous wealth, and strife. The narrative has two major pieces; one describes the immediate aftermath of the opening killing. The second is a flashback, a memoir penned in prison. Memoir writer Benjamin Nyman Vizcarra, one of the general’s sons, describes the events that have led him to prison, including his wild love for Isabel, a woman he thinks has betrayed him. The flamboyant story is equally colored by magical realism (El Brujo, a wizard-like Tarahumara Indian character who runs unceasingly in the prison yard) and Swedenborgianism (heroine Isabel is a Swedenborgian). But the reader need not be familiar with Swedenborg to understand and delight in the narrative arc. (Apr.)

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The Half-Stitched Amish Quilting Club
Wanda E. Brunstetter. Barbour, $14.99 trade paper (320p) ISBN 978-1-60260-811-5

Popular Amish specialist Brunstetter (Kentucky Brothers series) offers a twist on Amish: a group of “English” (i.e., non-Amish) people take a quilting class from Amish widow Emma Yoder. The students all have problems in their lives that they inevitably bring to the class, which quickly functions as a support group as they—sometimes reluctantly—hear one another out. They are unsubtly diverse: a black preacher’s wife, a Hispanic widower who is a single dad, a biker working off a DUI, a goth young adult, a bickering suburban couple. Brunstetter’s fans will likely ignore the shortcomings of the novel (clunky dialogue like “Do you see that colorful Amish quilt hanging on the line in the yard across the road?”) and have some fun as their favorite character resolves his or her crisis with a stitch in time. (Apr.)

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The Fiddler
Beverly Lewis. Bethany House, $19.99 (352p) ISBN 978-0-7642-0987-1

Amelia Devries finds herself living an artistic double life: she’s a talented concert violinist who’s also very good at fiddling. But fiddling doesn’t fit into the plans of her musician boyfriend, her violinist father, or her agent. When a severe thunderstorm strands her in the rural mountains of Pennsylvania, she takes refuge at a cabin inhabited by Michael Hostetler, a young fence-sitting Amish man who can’t decide whether to take the formal vows to join the Amish community. Her chance connection with Michael allows Amelia an opening into his community, while Michael finds himself increasingly attracted to the outsider. Lewis’s presentation of Amish life portrays the advantages and disadvantages of a community with definite rules and a solidarity that can be both enviable and constraining. The musical motifs offer welcome variation on very familiar Amish themes that Lewis renders in virtuoso style. This opens the Home to Hickory Hollow series, but stands alone nicely. (Apr.)

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Illusion
Frank Peretti. Howard, $26.99 (512p) ISBN 978-1-4391-9267-2

Some novelists resist allegory, but Peretti (Monster) embraces it. When Mandy dies in a car accident, Dane, her husband of 40 years and illusionist partner, must carry on without her. But is he really without her? Mandy awakens from the accident in the present, but as a 19-year-old who thinks it’s 1970. The two soon meet as Mandy is experimenting with some new magical powers and trying to figure out just who is behind this grand illusion. Though she calls herself Eloise, she resembles the Mandy whom Dane met 40 years before, and it’s making him crazy. Meanwhile Mandy wonders if she is certifiably crazy herself, but she is soon confronted by dark figures who know why she came back and what could become of her. Peretti captures the irony of how two magicians get caught in a greater illusion than they’ve ever created themselves. (Mar. 6)

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Abby Finds Her Calling
Naomi King. New American Library, $15 trade paper (320p) ISBN 978-0-451-23573-2

The Amish also live in Missouri, jah, where King (Summer of Secrets) sets her new series, Home at Cedar Creek. A wedding is called off when bride Suzanna Lambright goes missing, and her older sister Abby must deliver the bad news to bridegroom James Graber, whom Abby secretly loves. When Zanna returns and discloses why she left, her family and the rest of the community must decide how to live with her and what she has done. The plot is Amish-simple. What distinguishes this from many other Amish romances is how it shows that forbearance and forgiveness take a good deal of work, and the Amish, like everybody else, gossip, bicker, and sometimes have less-than-ideal family lives. While some developments strain credulity, King has created enough open-ended characters to entice the reader back to Cedar Creek for more. Agent: Evan Marshall. (Mar.)

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