Top Ten Books for Christmas

With branches across Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire, religious bookseller St Andrew’s is well placed to tell us about the best selling books in our Diocese this Christmas. Here are their hot favourites to be in lots of stockings on Christmas morning:

1. Velvet Elvis. Author Rob Bell says: ‘This book is for those who need a fresh take on Jesus and what it means for us to live the kind of life he teaches us to live.’ Zondervan Publishing. St Andrew’s price: £7.19.

2. Teenagers! What Every Parent Has to Know.  Rob Parsons is a lawyer, father and a popular and insightful speaker on family issues. He is the author of the successful Sixty Minute series of books. Here he turns his attention to adolescence – a difficult period of life for everyone in a family! Published by Hodder Headline. £6.39.

3. Just Walk Across the Room. ‘The highest value in personal evangelism is co-operating with the Spirit,’ says author Bill Hybels: ‘This means playing only the role you’re meant to play – walking when the Spirit says to walk, talking when he says to talk, and falling silent when he suggests that you’ve said enough.’ Zondervan Publishing. £7.19

4. Secret Believers: What happens when Muslims turn to Christ? By Brother Andrew/Al Jansen. Most of this book is written as a thrilling novel, tracing the intertwined lives of a small group of believers in an unnamed Islamic country. But, as the book progresses it emerges that the stories are all based on the actual experiences of real people that Andrew meets on a regular basis. Published by Hodder Headline. £7.99

5. Totally Forgiving Ourselves. A sequel to author R T Kendall’s best-selling book ‘Total Forgiveness’ which looked at how to forgive others. Here Kendall tells us why it is equally important that we learn to forgive ourselves. Published by Hodder Headline. £7.99.

6. The Heavenly Man.  By Paul Hattaway. An intensely dramatic autobiography by of one of China’s house church leaders, challenging any complacency about the situation in China. Published by Lion Hudson. £7.19.

7.  What’s so Amazing about Grace? Hot on the heels of his bestselling ‘The Jesus I Never Knew’, here Philip Yancey delivers an insightful exploration of grace, the most powerful force in the universe and our only hope for love and forgiveness. Now available in paperback. Zondervan Publishing. £7.19.

8. When The Game is Over It All Goes Back In The Box. Using popular games as a metaphor for our temporal lives, John Ortberg neatly sorts out what’s fleeting and what’s permanent in God’s Kingdom. Zondervan Publishing. £7.19.

9. Facing Your Giants, by Max Lucado. With 40 million books in print, Lucado draws readers here with his focus on the life of the Old Testament hero, David.
Published by Word Publishing. £7.99

10. Prayer: Does it make any Difference? By Philip Yancey. A second entry in the top 10 for this popular multi-award-winning spirituality author.  His quest here is to unravel the mysteries of prayer which he does as a fellow traveller, questioning, challenging, lamenting the unexplainable and rejoicing in the discovery of awesome insights. Published by Hodder Headline. £7.99.