100 Amazing Answers to Prayer

Prayer, according to William J. and Randy Petersen, is not about using God to get what we want, but about forging a relationship with God. Still, it's the miraculous success stories that find their way into the Petersens' book 100 Amazing Answers to Prayer, a collection of people's accounts of how they have been saved from probable death, alerted to avoid dangerous situations just in the nick of time, or miraculously led to the one person who needed to hear the gospel message. Some of the stories are about celebrities or have been ripped from the headlines; others are from ordinary folks who feel they have received direct answers to prayer in the form of weather miracles, guardian angels, inexplicable healings or sudden windfalls. The stories are memorable, but the book is very similar to others already on the market, including a recent series by Karen Kingsbury. (Mar.)