Those who grow up with the knowledge of God's love know that He is there to guide them in their life. Even in bad times, they know that God will help them see things through and come out better when the trials have ended.

But what about those who have not been raised with God in their lives? Samantha Ryan Chandler knows about living without God. Or at least she thought she did.

In A Love Story: How God Pursued Me and Found Me, she tells her story of love, hatred, abuse, forgiveness, betrayal, greed, enlightenment, and fear. Born to a pagan mother and a former altar boy living in a land of denial, she recounts how God was involved in her life even before she knew who He was.

She shares the story of her trip to the Holy Land and how her prayers at the Wailing Wall were interrupted because of a hamburger. Yes, despite her tribulations, her life has had its funny moments as well.

You'll find inspiration in A Love Story: How God Pursued Me and Found Me—and like Chandler, you, too, may find yourself pursued by God.

Abide with Me is a luminous and long-awaited novel by the bestselling author Elizabeth Strout. Returning readers to the archetypal, lovely landscape of northern New England, the story unfolds in the late 1950s in the small town of West Annett, Maine.

Here, Reverend Tyler Caskey struggles to regain his calling, his family, and his happiness in the wake of profound loss. The community he serves charismatically must come to terms with its own strengths and failings—faith and hypocrisy, loyalty and abandonment—when a dark secret is revealed.

Tyler has come to love West Annett, "just up the road" from where he was born. The short, brilliant summers and the sharp, piercing winters fill him with awe—as does his congregation, full of good people who seek his guidance and listen earnestly as he preaches. But after suffering a terrible loss, Tyler finds it hard to return to himself as he once was. He hasn't had The Feeling—that God is all around him, in the beauty of the world—for quite some time.

He struggles to find the right words in his sermons and in his conversations with those facing crises of their own, and to bring his five-year-old daughter, Katherine, out of the silence she has observed in the wake of the family's tragedy.

A congregation that had once been patient and kind during Tyler's grief now questions his leadership and propriety. In the kitchens, classrooms, offices, and stores of the village, anger and gossip have started to swirl. And in Tyler's darkest hour, a startling discovery will test his congregation's humanity—and his own will to endure the kinds of trials that sooner or later test us all.

In prose incandescent and artful, Elizabeth Strout draws readers into the details of ordinary life in a way that makes it extraordinary. All is considered—life, love, God, and community—within these pages, and all is made new by this writer's boundless compassion and graceful prose.

Eight centuries ago the first Knight of the Word was commissioned to combat the demonic evil of the Void. Now that daunting legacy has passed to John Ross—along with powerful magic and the knowledge that his actions are all that stand between a living hell and humanity's future.

Then, after decades of service to the Word, an unspeakable act of violence shatters John Ross's weary faith. Haunted by guilt, he turns his back on his dread gift, settling down to build a normal life, untroubled by demons and nightmares.

But a fallen Knight makes a tempting prize for the Void, which could bend the Knight's magic to its own evil ends. And once the demons on Ross's trail track him to Seattle, neither he nor anyone close to him will be safe. His only hope is Nest Freemark, a college student who wields an extraordinary magic all her own. Five years earlier, Ross had aided Nest when the future of humanity rested upon her choice between Word and Void. Now Nest must return the favor. She must restore Ross's faith, or his life—and hers—will be forfeit...