The Evangelical Christian Publishers Association has announced the 37 finalists for the 2015 Christian Book Award program, honoring Christian publishing’s best book and Bible releases of the year.

The top five titles in Fiction, Non-Fiction, Children, Inspiration, and Bibles—with ties in both Bible Reference and New Author—make up the stellar finalist pool deemed as the “best Christian books of the year.”

A winner in each category and the Christian Book of the Year will be announced on May 5 among industry leadership at the ECPA Awards Banquet held in conjunction with the ECPA Leadership Summit in Nashville. 

The announcements will coincide with the launch of the industry’s #ReadGoodBooks that feed your soul social media campaign—wherein that evening a mass tweet announcing the winners will hit Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr accounts through a Thunderclap campaign. 

Anyone with a Twitter, Facebook or Tumblr account who believes in the importance of good Christian content is invited to join the campaign at thndr.it/1GTxJyI.

Through a quick sign-up, participants would allow Thunderclap to send only the one tweet at that one time, announcing the winners to their followers—resulting in a huge blitz of awareness.  The tweet will refer to #ReadGoodBooks—a hashtag that will be used in promoting Christian Book Award winners and finalists, and extending to all award-winning and bestselling content produced by the ECPA industry.

Here are the 2015 Christian Book Award nominees:

Non-Fiction

• A Loving Life: In a World of Broken Relationships, Paul E. Miller | Crossway
• Autopsy of a Deceased Church: 12 Ways to Keep Yours Alive,Thom S. Rainer | B&H Publishing Group
• The Measure of Success: Uncovering Biblical Perspective on Women, Work and the Home, Carolyn McCulley with Nora Shank | B&H Publishing Group
• Mission Drift: The Unspoken Crisis Facing Leaders, Charities, and Churches, Peter Greer and Chris Horst with Anna Haggard | Bethany House/ Baker Publishing Group
• Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: A Devout Muslim Encounters Christianity, Nabeel Qureshi | Zondervan

  Fiction

• The Advocate, Randy Singer | Tyndale House Publishers
• The Auschwitz Escape, Joel C. Rosenberg | Tyndale House Publishers
• The Legend of Sheba: Rise of a Queen, Tosca Lee | Howard Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
• The Pursuit of Tamsen Littlejohn: A Novel, Lori Benton | WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group
• The Sentinels of Andersonville, Tracy Groot | Tyndale House Publishers

  Inspiration

• The Daniel Plan: 40 Days to a Healthier Life, Rick Warren, Daniel Amen and Mark Hyman | Zondervan
• The Hardest Peace: Expecting Grace in the Midst of Life’s Hard, Kara Tippetts | David C Cook
• I Like Giving: The Transforming Power of a Generous Life, Brad Formsma | WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group
• Stand Strong: You Can Overcome Bullying, Nick Vujicic | WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group
• The Wonder of His Name, Nancy Leigh DeMoss | Moody Publishers

Bibles

• Every Man’s Bible NIV, Stephen Arterburn & Dean Merrill, General Editors | Tyndale House Publishers
• NIV First-Century Study Bible, with notes by Kent Dobson | Zondervan
• Life Application Study Bible HCSB | Tyndale House Publishers, 9781414381206
• NKJV Study Bible, Full Color Edition | Thomas Nelson Publishers

The Study Bible for Women HCSB

, Dorothy Kelley Patterson, Rhonda Harrington Kelley, Holman Bible Staff, Editors B&H Publishing Group

Bible Reference

•  1,2 and 3 John: Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, Karen H. Jobes | Zondervan
•  For the Glory of God: Recovering a Biblical Theology of Worship, Daniel I. Block | Baker Academic/ Baker Publishing Group
• Galations (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament), Douglas J. Moo | Baker Academic/ Baker Publishing Group
• Mark: Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, Mark L. Strauss | Zondervan
• Lutheran Bible Companion Set, Edward A. Engelbrecht | Concordia Publishing House
• Revelation (Teach the Text Commentary Series), J. Scott Duvall | Baker Academic/ Baker Publishing Group

Children

• 101 Color & Sing Bible Stories, Stephen Elkins | Tyndale House Publishers
• Goodnight, Ark!, Laura Sassi, Illustrated by Jane Chapman | ZonderKidz
• Love Letters from God, Glenys Nellist, Illustrated by Sophie Allsopp | ZonderKidz
• My Bible Animals Storybook, Dandi Daley Mackall, Illustrated by Heather Heyworth | Tyndale House Publishers
• One God, One Plan, One Life: A 365 Devotional, Max Lucado | Thomas Nelson Publishers

New Author

• And Life Comes Back: A Wife’s Story of Love, Loss, and Hope Reclaimed, Tricia Lott Williford WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group
• Dispatches From the Front: Stories of Gospel Advance in the World’s Difficult Places, Tim Keesee | Crossway
• Jesus or Nothing, Dan DeWitt | Crossway
• The Skeletons in God’s Closet, Joshua Ryan Butler | Thomas Nelson Publishers
• Teach Us to Want: Longing, Ambition and the Life of Faith, Jen Pollock Michel | InterVarsity Press
• Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: A Devout Muslim Encounters Christianity, Nabeel Qureshi | Zondervan
• New Author Nabeel Qureshi is a finalist in both the New Author category and the Non-Fiction category for Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: A Devout Muslim Encounters Christianity (Zondervan).

“These 37 titles join a premier collection of Christian content carrying our industry’s highest accolade,” says ECPA President/CEO Mark Kuyper. “We are honored to promote them as the apex of what we do as an industry: produce great books that feed the soul in a marketplace too often dominated by content that starves it.”

Notable to the finalists this year:

• According to program rules, a submission to the New Author category can also be entered in their genre category as a separate entry.
• The Inspiration finalists represent a poignant array of topics: from health and wellness in The Daniel Plan (Rick Warren / Zondervan) and bullying in Stand Strong: You Can Overcome Bullying (Nick Vujjcic / WaterBrook Multnomah); to a raw memoir about living while dying by young mom and blogger Kara Tippetts in The Hardest Peace: Expecting Grace in the Midst of Life’s Hard (David C Cook).
• Zondervan leads the list this year with eight finalists in six of the seven categories. Tyndale House Publishers has seven titles in three categories, dominating the Fiction list with three of five titles. Ties occurred in New Author and in Bible Reference, where three of the six reference works were Baker Academic/ Baker Publishing Group titles.

Christian Book Award program finalists and winners receive recognition and support throughout multiple retail and media outlets, including Christian Retailing, ChristianBook.com, Cokesbury, Family Christian, Lifeway, Mardel, Munce Group, Parable Christian Stores, Crossings, Innovative/Signature Websites, NetGalley, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.

The Christian Book Award program has recognized the absolute highest quality in Christian books since 1978. Based on excellence in content, literary quality, design, and impact, the Christian Book Award program is the oldest and among the most prestigious awards in the religious publishing industry.

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