Biblical scholars Bashaw (Scapegoats) and Higashi (1 & 2 Samuel for Normal People) team up for a lucid guide to reading scripture. Using cooking as a guiding metaphor, they detail the complexities of interpretation, describing it as a process wherein different “chefs” with unique sociocultural backgrounds use the same basic ingredients to produce vastly different results. Among the book’s most useful elements are its tips on handling the Bible’s various “ingredients,” from its prose (don’t pay much attention to headings and verses, many of which were added millennia after the Bible’s composition) to the apocalyptic prophecies of Revelations (keep historical context firmly in mind when encountering “violent images and disturbing warnings,” which were used to jolt “empire-compromised readers into repentance” or assure first-century Christians their nonbelieving oppressors would get their comeuppance). While the cooking metaphor wears thin in a few places, it provides an accessible entry point into the sometimes-opaque world of biblical scholarship, and the authors’ colorful personal anecdotes enliven the proceedings. Church study groups will be especially edified. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 10/24/2025 | Details & Permalink

Conservationist Rosolie (Mother of God) shares an energizing account of a lifetime spent protecting more than 100,000 acres of wilderness in Peru. A lover of nature since boyhood, the author signed up for an expedition to the Amazonian jungle at age 18. Seeing the devastation being wrought on the rainforest, particularly the new roads cropping up around the Trans-Amazonian highway, motivated him to dedicate his life to conservation. In 2014, he founded Junglekeepers, an organization that protects the Peruvian jungle by employing rangers to protect tracts of land. Here. Rosolie catalogs the dire threats posed by loggers and drug cartels who are slashing and burning their way through the rainforest, wreaking havoc on local ecosystems and the homes of Indigenous tribes. But he’s also refreshingly optimistic about the future, rejecting “antihuman” narratives that “we are a plague on the planet... and there’s nothing that can be done” by pointing to activists who have committed themselves to saving the environment. More personally, he uses the story of finding his own “calling”—a spiritual process in which he “lost my mind to find my path”—to advocate for the importance of following one’s dreams, even when it “requires cutting away most of what constitutes a normal life, parts of you that stitches can’t fix.” Honest yet hopeful, this will provide plenty of inspiration for budding conservationists. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 10/24/2025 | Details & Permalink

In this eccentric guide, bestseller Choquette (Ask Your Guides) shares the advice for tapping into one’s divine nature that she claims was revealed to her in 2002 by “the Emissaries of the Third Ray,” a group of spirit teachers from the fifth dimension. These lessons, which have been updated in the wake of a “new Earth vibration” that began after the pandemic, comprise a “direct transmission” from the spirit guides, according to Choquette, who provides commentary and examples. The guidance is generally sensible, advising readers to pursue what they love and to seek out the blessings in challenging circumstances. The ultimate goal, Choquette writes, is to bypass the fear-based, ego-focused “third dimension” and move into the fourth dimension of the spirit and the fifth dimension of universal connection and unconditional love. Still, readers new to Choquette’s work may struggle to accept the origins of the lessons and have a tough time with her awkward prose and odd examples, like how her sister recovered from a divorce by becoming a trapeze artist and joining the circus. Choquette’s devoted fans may find inspiration, but others would be better served elsewhere. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 10/24/2025 | Details & Permalink

In her empowering debut, therapist Gustafson guides readers through recovery from intimate partner betrayal, defined here as a sexual or emotional violation of the (spoken or unspoken) “relationship agreement.” Outlining a multistep recovery process, she explains how readers can take stock of the extent of the betrayal; process messy, complex emotions on their own timeline; adjust to the new reality of their relationship (whether it’s ended or been redefined); and rediscover themselves by reviving friendships and taking up new hobbies. She also offers advice specific to Christian readers, warning them to be wary of well-meaning faith “wisdom” that forgiveness must be immediate and unequivocal. While readers should eventually forgive their partners, Gustafson contends, it’s largely for their own peace of mind and need not happen on a specific timeline or lead to reconciliation. Drawing on her own efforts to recover from her husband’s infidelity, Gustafson outlines a flexible, holistic philosophy that gives due to the messiness of human emotions (“You cannot heal your heart with your head”) while clarifying that recovery is possible. The result is a compassionate guide to a common but hard-to-discuss relationship issue. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 10/24/2025 | Details & Permalink

Entrepreneur Malone debuts with an unfocused account of the spiritual awakening that saved his life. After marrying for the second time, the author was professionally successful but deeply mired in an addiction to prescription painkillers. Healing began when his wife bought him a shih tzu puppy, inspiring him to shift his focus away “from my own troubles.” Several years later, recovered but reeling from the death of a close family friend, he visited a psychic who informed him he was a “healer,” initiating a deep dive into spirituality that ranged from apparitions to Marian iconography. He also expounds on spiritual phenomena more generally, ruminating on near-death experiences, meditation as a gateway to new spiritual states, and orbs as “mystical signs, spiritual messengers, or simply unexplained natural occurrences” in cultures throughout history. While Malone’s curiosity appeals, it engenders a surfeit of tangents that obscure the narrative arc, and his stilted prose doesn’t help matters. This eclectic and eccentric personal history fails to add up to more than the sum of its parts. (Dec.)

Reviewed on 10/24/2025 | Details & Permalink

Therapist Cameron debuts with perceptive guide to forging stronger relationships. Attachment styles—the ways people in relationships relate to each other emotionally—are unconsciously programmed in childhood, Cameron explains, as the relationship with one’s primary caregivers forms a template for future bonds. For example, kids who lack “experiences of comfort and consistency from a parent” often develop a “learned insecurity” that makes it harder to maintain stable bonds rooted in trust. Readers can rewire their attachment styles by becoming aware of unhealthy coping strategies, learning to identify their emotions, and more intentionally managing them. Cameron details five insecure attachment types (avoiders, pleasers, vacillators, controllers, and victims) and how each can create healthier patterns; for instance, avoiders can overcome their tendency to evade conflict by staying with uncomfortable emotions for an extended period of time, better understanding how their tendency to avoid developed, and accepting support from others. Combining rigorous psychological analysis with practical tools, Cameron constructs a valuable program wherein readers can acknowledge their developmental harms without being defined by them. Readers looking to improve their relationships with themselves and others will find plenty of insight. (Dec.)

Reviewed on 10/17/2025 | Details & Permalink

The concept of the soul is a “crackpot” idea ripe for debunking, according to this strident treatise from University of Washington psychology professor Barash (The Survival Game). Its popularity, the author suggests, derives from a number of factors: the soul assuages the fear of death by suggesting a part of the self is immortal; it keeps populations “on the straight-and-narrow” by wielding fears of eternal damnation (Barash calls such threats “the cosmic stick” of organized religions); and panders to humans’ egoistic self-perception as special. Still, the concept of the soul is riddled with downsides, Barash contends, including the corresponding fear of hell, its negation of modern science, and its detracting from the value of one’s “wild and precious life.” The belief also lacks any practical grounding, according to Barash, who notes that science has failed to conclusively identify a moment of “ensoulment” within the life cycle. While the author builds a robust scientific case, he too casually dismisses religious notions of the soul, which he shoehorns into a single chapter that skims across thousands of years’ worth of history. The result is an intermittently thought-provoking but ultimately incomplete rebuttal of a foundational spiritual concept. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 10/17/2025 | Details & Permalink

Journalist Gilger (coauthor of There’s No Crying in Newsrooms) recounts in her candid memoir how her son’s Jesuit ordination shaped her belief. Patrick decided in college to join the Jesuit order—a surprise for the author, a self-professed skeptic who’d grown up Catholic but raised her son mostly in the Episcopal church. As he progressed through his training, mother and son negotiated the damages wrought by the Catholic church, including its sex abuse scandals, and considered its worth as an imperfect institution that nonetheless provides “a scaffolding and community” for a Jesus-centered way of life. Gilger also grappled with the complex reasoning behind priestly celibacy, the place of ritual, and the role of women in the church. Her eventual return to Catholicism, she writes, was less a wholehearted embrace of the faith than a recognition of its value despite its flaws. Throughout, Gilger critiques Catholicism while leaving room for its mysteries (“I’ve given up trying to know everything, and I’m beginning to accept what I can’t possibly know yet deeply feel”). Most affecting is the depiction of a mother’s unflinching willingness to follow her son into unexpected places (“We went with Patrick, haltingly and stumbling at times, but we went with him”). This will strike a chord with Catholics who have questioned their own faith. (Dec.)

Reviewed on 10/10/2025 | Details & Permalink

Smith, the wife of country music singer Granger Smith, debuts with a wrenching account of finding her faith in the wake of her son’s death. After three-year-old River drowned in the couple’s pool in 2019, Smith endured public criticism and weeks of unbearable pain while grappling with her other children’s grief. Those days of “laying on the bathroom floor, feeling so alone,” she writes, allowed her to fully process her feelings and question why God had let the tragedy happen. She slowly realized how God uses trauma to “fulfill his eternal purpose in our lives.... What we might see as unbearable, He sees as the very tool He uses to bring about His perfect plan.” Much of her advice entails familiar I’ve-been-there reassurance that recovery happens in its own time, though she also shares complex reflections on the limits of grief, recalling a moment several years after her son’s death in which “God revealed an uncomfortable truth: I had made River an idol in my life. My pain, my longing for him, my constant thoughts of him—they had begun to eclipse... the Lord.” Christians seeking healing will find honesty and hope. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 10/10/2025 | Details & Permalink

Rosset, a Jungian psychoanalyst, details in her eye-catching debut how to use astrology to guide one’s plant medicine practice. Physicians in ancient Greece and China prescribed herbs based on a patient’s astrological sign, the author writes, tapping into a deep “resonance between the life force of plants and the life force of the cosmos.” She explains how readers can utilize that connection to analyze their birth charts and identify their key planets’ “archetypal signatures,” or primary characteristics and energetic force. When that energetic force is out of whack, readers can use a corresponding plant to correct for the resulting symptoms; for example, feelings of depression can be assuaged by St. John’s Wort, “which embodies the Sun’s radiant energy,” while rose and other plants that embody Venus’s “principles of love, beauty, and harmony” encourage feelings of love and self-acceptance. While beginners might wish for clearer guidance on analyzing their birth charts’ planet placements, advanced astrologers will gain much from Rosset’s thorough explanations of each herb’s properties and broad array of recipes for teas, skin care, incense, and bath rituals. Enriched by vivid illustrations, this compendium will satisfy readers seeking fresh approaches to plant medicine. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 10/10/2025 | Details & Permalink