Showing results by narrator "Carla Mercer-Meyer" in All Categories

Greta loves her job as assistant librarian. She loves her best friend, Will, the high school civics teacher and debate coach. She even loves her mother despite her obvious disappointment that Greta is still single. Then she meets Mac in the poetry section of the library, and she is smitten. Mac is heart-stoppingly gorgeous and showers her with affection - poetic text messages, and free hot chocolate at the local café where he works. The only problem is that he seems to be a different person in his texts than in his face-to-face conversation.

We all have "weeping years", seasons where the trials seem to come one after another. For Ashleigh and her husband, their weeping years included miscarriage, multiple job losses, feelings of betrayal, panic attacks, anti-depressants, cross-country moves, and even suicidal thoughts. Loss is a constant of life, but the intensity of those years changed Ashleigh, altering how she understood and responded to grief. This book tells her story.

Many believers know in their heads that God cares about them. But it's hard to hold that truth in your heart when you're worn out and weary from the mundane, everyday battles and struggles - when you lose your temper again or give into that persistent temptation or feel paralyzed by overwhelming circumstances. The truth is that the Holy Spirit is right there - waiting for you to let him help. With warmth and encouragement, Sarah Bowling shows how he longs to be part of every situation you face in life.

What happened to the girl who was not afraid to climb to the top of the waterfall and jump? Who backpacked across Europe? Who took on any feat of bravery without batting an eyelash? You wouldn't recognize her - she's become that woman paralyzed by fear, scared to death to trust God, and trying to manage her family's hectic life, financial crises (yes, plural), and family issues on her own steam. Relatable, touching, and yet hopeful, On the Other Side of Fear is the beautiful story of how one young woman learned to live in God's will, without fear.

In The Happy Traveler: Unpacking the Secrets of Better Vacations, psychology professor Dr. Jaime Kurtz applies the large and ever-growing body of research on happiness and decision-making to enhance the experience of travel. An avid explorer, study abroad instructor, teacher, and happiness researcher, Dr. Kurtz shows how anyone who has a vacation in his or her future can create the most meaningful, fulfilling, and joyful experiences possible.

There are so many moments in life when we choose to silence our intuition, abandon our own voice, and play small because we wonder, deep down: "Do I know who I really am? Is who I really am enough?" It's courageous work to learn to live from our essential identity - loved, worthy, whole. But what if God is calling us to shamelessly recover the woman he created us to be? What if God is urging us to be - for the first time in our lives - brazen?

To the people of Sweet Water, a fading railroad town on the Western plains, Mrs. Forrester is the resident aristocrat, at once gracious and comfortably remote. To her aging husband she is a treasure whose value increases as his powers fail. To Niel Herbert, who falls in love with her as a boy and becomes her confidant as a man, Mrs. Forrester is by turns steadfast and faithless, dazzling and pathetic: a woman whose charm is intertwined with a terrifying vulnerability.

Kara Tippetts discovered how to find joy in the small moments of life. She learned how to hold tight to hope, even while battling intense physical and emotional pain. And she lived out the truth that God can redeem any story. In her final book, Kara offers gentle reflections on living and dying well. She invites us to cultivate soft hearts, even when we face great disappointment. Her ideas for living are hard-won, wrestled with in the crucible of family, illness, and faith.

The Maiden Thief by multiple NYT and internationally best-selling author Melissa Marr is a dark fantasy novelette about a teenager whose town is plagued by the annual disappearances of girls and young women.

Violet Mayhew is a proper young lady - who's on the run from her parents! Eleven-year-old Violet has one goal in mind when she runs away from home: To find her sister, Chloe. Violet’s parents say Chloe has turned into the "wrong sort of person", but Violet knows better. The only problem is that Chloe’s not in New York anymore. She's moved on to Tennessee, where she's fighting for women's right to vote. As Violet's journey grows longer, her single-minded pursuit of reuniting with her sister changes.

Set in the sparse frontier settlements of northeastern Brazil, Backlands tells the true story of a group of nomadic outlaws who reigned over the area from about 1922 until 1938. Taking from the rich and feared by the poor, they were led by the famously charismatic bandit Lampiao.

They've escaped the Breeders, yet their journey has just begun. Riley and Clay are once again on the run from the Breeders. The group may have escaped the deranged experiments at the hospital, but as one of the world's last free women, Riley can never be safe. On the road back home, Riley and her crew are captured by a band of savage men. Their destination: the Citadel, run by a bizarre religious prophet named the Messiah. Somehow he knows their secrets. He wants them to join his group of Believers, but only if they'll drink the baptismal water and swear allegiance.

In a dystopian future, an epic battle between the sexes will determine who lives and who dies. After the Blue Pox pandemic wipes out 99.99 percent of males and 99.95 percent of females, the majority under the age of 50,18-year-old Madison wanders the countryside, lost and alone. She joins forces with Katherine, a former anthropologist, in search of a safe place to live, and the two find a group of women gathered on the campus of a small college in East Tennessee.

Stay follows Abbey, a young woman from Canada now living in a village outside Galway. She falls in love with Dermot, an older Irish man, in an unconventional, affectionate but troubled relationship.

In 1918, rainy Dundee is nearly emptied of men. The Great War has left the town’s women both newfound freedom and servitude. They toil in the deadly jute mills, taking in the children of perished family members and praying their own bodies - and spirits - do not fail them too. A grateful widow of the war, Morag shelters her daughters as best she can: beautiful Caro schemes to escape the working class with well-calculated seduction, while Wallis works in the mill alongside her mother, slowly fortifying both spirit and pocketbook for a more radical departure.

Emily Miller tells her personal story of how being a single, female victim of a home invasion drove her to try to obtain a legally registered gun in Washington, D.C. The narrative - sometimes shocking, other times hilarious in its absurdity - gives the listener a real-life understanding of how gun-control laws only make it more difficult for honest, law-abiding people to get guns, while violent crime continues to rise.

Veterinary technician Carrie Kennersly loves both of her shops in Knobcone Heights: Icing on the Cake for human treats and Barkery and Biscuits, where she sells healthy dog treats she developed. A frequent visitor is Jack Loroco, who has been trying to get Carrie to sell recipes to his pet-food-manufacturer employer, VimPets. Recently, VimPets employee Wanda Adler accompanied him to town, apparently wanting a relationship and more with Jack. When Wanda is found murdered, Carrie has to do all she can to find the killer.

Hurt and brokenhearted after a painful divorce, Audrey Blair picks up and moves to Nashville looking for a fresh start. Her faithful German Shepherd Duke helps Audrey and her two daughters settle in while Audrey focuses on her work as a vocal coach. Even though she's currently at odds with her faith, Audrey takes a chance and applies for work at a Christian music label. She's not looking for a relationship, but a game of fetch changes everything when her dog runs into Troy Jackson.

From the CEO and co-founder of Hope for Justice, author of Impossible Is a Dare, and creator of the Dear 26-Year-Old Me podcast comes an honest, compelling, and inspiring collection of wisdom and experience to empower those in business and ministry to see their world-changing vision become a reality. In Relentless Pursuit, Ben Cooley speaks with self-made billionaires, Grammy-award winning musicians, megachurch pastors, and network marketers, who give unprecedented access to the challenges, struggles, and doubts they have faced on their journey.

Women are fierce and fed-up, and they have been joining hands together for the purposes of societal change for as long as there has been injustice. Women of faith are guided by the Holy Spirit to work together to bring down these injustices, to build on the foundation Christ laid for the beloved community of God on earth. This book is women joining together to speak and act in new ways in response to the increasing challenges of our day.