Peter Hitchens, brother of prominent atheist and author Christopher Hitchens (God is Not Great), explains his own spiritual journey in The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me To Faith ($22.99, 978-0-310-32031-9, Zondervan), releasing this month.

In the book, Hitchens, who burned his Bible in prep school but later came to faith in Christ, says he wanted to offer something for atheists and Christians.

“I want to explain how I became convinced, by reason and experience, of the necessity and rightness of a form of Christianity that is modest, accommodating, and thoughtful—but ultimately uncompromising about its vital truth,” he writes. “I hope very much by doing so, I can at least cause those who consider themselves to be atheists to hesitate over their choice. I also hope to provide Christians with insights they can use, the better to understand their unbelieving friends and so perhaps to sow some small seeds of doubt.”

Hitchens presents the circumstances that influenced him toward atheism, which he said were similar to those his brother encountered.

“We are separate people who have lived different lives,” he writes in the book’s introduction. “But since it is obvious that this book arises out of my attempt to debate religion with him, it would be absurd to pretend that much of what I say here is not intended to counter or undermine arguments he has presented in his own book on this subject.”

Hitchens writes about a public debate he had with his brothers in Grand Rapids, Mich., in 2008 and a “softening” of blows between them. In the book’s epilogue, Hitchens shares candidly about their decades-long sibling, and now intellectual, feud, which he gratefully proclaims is over.

For more information or to order, call Zondervan at 800-727-1309, or visit www.zondervan.com.

‘Facts of Life’ actress reveals personal journey to a sense of community

Although Lisa Whelchel portrayed a character with close friends while starring in television’s The Facts of Life, a busy work schedule during the crucial adolescent years kept her from truly connecting in real life. In Friendship for Grown-Ups: What I Missed & Learned Along the Way, she opens up about her personal life and struggle with relationships.

“Learning the ins and outs of navigating friendships in your 40s is really awkward, especially when you make the silly mistakes that you make as a young girl,” she told Christian Retailing. “Making them as a middle-aged woman is not pretty.”

Whelchel said she had been reluctant to get too personal in her latest book, bypassing her personal hurts and struggles and instead deciding to focus on friendships, some of which she made as a member of the Women of Faith team of speakers. During the process, however, she began to notice that the book was becoming more revealing than she expected.

“It ended up being a deep look at the messiness of what happens when God comes and does an overhaul on your heart,” she said. “Everything God has done, He has done within the context of community and relationships. It’s definitely a book about friendships, but it’s also a book about what God does when He wants to do a deep, healing, growing work in our hearts. He usually does it through people.”

Whelchel, who has begun sharing from the book during Women of Faith tour stops, said she feels women are identifying with her insecurities.

“I’m learning more women feel the same way I do, even if they had the traditional school experience,” she said. “By opening up my life and my journey, I think women are identifying with where they are, and it feels safer to know they’re not the only ones who are insecure or have been really hurt in a relationship and are wondering if it’s really worth it to open up again.”

Despite the pain, sometimes caused by friends, Whelchel said building bonds is definitely worth it.

“Friendships are more than just somebody to go the mall with,” she said. “I think it’s one of the primary ways that God lets us know about Him and who He is—and lets us know about ourselves. My walk with the Lord has exploded as I have come to open up more to relationships.”

Whelchel, who became a Christian at age 10, credits a strong faith for keeping her stable in Hollywood. In light of the recent news of former child-actor deaths, she attributed her stability to “the grace of God and His covering over my life.”

“I knew I was a child of God, and it doesn’t get much better than that,” she said. “I didn’t go down the typical paths looking for something to identify me or fill me up.”

To order Friendship for Grown-Ups, call Thomas Nelson at 800-251-4000, or visit www.thomasnelson.com.

To listen to an extended audio version of the interview, visit the book blogs section at www.christianretailing.com.

Resides in: Monument, Colo.

Now reading: Reviewing advance manuscripts for endorsements and judging novels for a writing competition.

Tell us about the final "Dreamhouse Kings" book, Frenzy.

"The whole series has been leading toward this final installment. While I tend to write stories that are subtle in the spirituality of the characters and themes, that I'm a strong Christian does come through my stories and my themes. The themes in the first five books, in my view, could be very spiritual in that the family has to learn to be a family and support each other. To me, that's a very godly theme, but not specifically Christian. Over the course of the six books, the family gets pretty beat up. They're at the bottom of the well. Just when you think here's how they get out of the situation, they always use their wits. They find themselves in the time of Christ and they're facing Jesus as He's carrying the cross to His crucifixion. I think a lot of people who have followed the story are going to be pleasantly surprised."

Many of your books have been optioned for films. What is the status of those?

"The last year has been really hard for Hollywood. A lot of projects got put on hold, and my projects were put on hold while they figured out the finances and what the economy was going to do to that town and industry. All of the books except for Deadlock are in some stage of pre-production, whether
it's a script or casting. None of them have been canceled which is a good thing. Just in the past few months, they're starting to pick back up again. Universal just this week had a big meeting about the 'Dreamhouse Kings' and moved forward on that, deciding what the budget might be, who the director might be. In this process, almost anything can go wrong, so while I'm not holding my breath, I am hopeful."

How do you balance realism without offending readers of Christian fiction?

"I tend to like really being in your face with gritty realism. I don't like pulling my punches when I write. I think stories ought to be hard hitting and not soft-pedal issues. Sometimes that means when you're dealing with a Christian reader, you could be encroaching on boundaries they're not wanting to cross. The way I balance that is I try to remind them that the Bible is very gritty and very real. We have to remember the consequences of evil can be very ugly. I think it does not benefit us as Christians to pretend that when someone dies, it's not gross, disgusting or tragic. If there's any conflict in terms of my Christian readers and what they would prefer to read, it's in that level of violence."

Any thoughts on the iPad? Is it a game changer?

"I think the Kindle was the game changer. What Amazon is doing with the game changer there, it's changing, if not all models, then at least hardcovers. I don't know if that means the demise of hardcovers. When a hardcover is running $25-26 and you can get a Kindle version for $9.99, I think a lot of people are going to go that direction. What I suspect we'll see probably is the ability to purchase Kindle books or iPad books in a bookstore, like in a Christian bookstore, because really what's missing in the whole process is the knowledge of the product that people want. I don't want to go online and read about a book. I want to be able to talk to somebody who knows the nuances of a particular story or someone who knows if you like this book, you'll like this (other) book. I think what'll happen is you'll get that back and forth with a retailer and consumer, and the retailer can punch it in and before you leave the store, you have that in your Kindle and don't have to go to Amazon and get it. It's unfair if you go into a Christian bookstore and (someone there) convinces you to read the Ted Dekker book, and the guy goes into his car in the parking lot and downloads it. All the work of the retailer doesn't pay off."

How many words do you write a day?

"I tend to immerse myself in a story when I go to write. I tend to write 4,000 words a day when I'm writing."

When a gunman opened fire at Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007, killing 33, the nation turned its attention to Blacksburg, Va. Jim Pace, co-pastor of New Life Christian Fellowship, found himself suddenly thrust into the spotlight, answering questions from media personalities such as Larry King and Anderson Cooper on why God allowed the tragedy to happen.

Pace remembers this experience as well as the nature of God in Should We Fire God?: Finding Hope in God When We Don't Understand (978-0-446-54614-0, $19.99, FaithWords), which includes a foreword by Rick Warren.

Pace launches from the tragedy to address common questions Christians and non-believers have about why suffering exists and why it seems God doesn't intervene—a subject increasingly relevant in light of 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the Indian Ocean tsunamis and the recent earthquake in Haiti.

"The really sticky issues for me have always dealt with why a God who claims to be capable, loving and aware could allow such suffering to occur for so long," he writes. "Difficult questions about God's job performance come at us in the midst of lives that are raging at full speed, and I believe God would honestly like to interact with us about them."

Pace, who serves in the Ecclesia Network, a group of churches that aim to learn from the emerging church, writes that moments of suffering should be used to draw closer, not farther away from God.

"I do not know when people will be over what happened here in Blacksburg or other terrible events that we have witnessed in the past and will no doubt see in the future. What I do know is that as we walk through our present with events like this in our past, we learn to turn our hearts to God and not away."

FaithWords is launching a Christian and general market print and broadcast campaign to promote the title.

For more information or to order Should We Fire God?, call 800-759-0190 or visit www.hachettebookgroup.com.

While some books chronicle Christian believers who lose their faith to become atheists, in Flirting With Faith: My Spiritual Journey From Atheism to a Faith-Filled Life, Joan Ball reverses that scenario, sharing her story of being captured by a God she had avoided throughout her life.

Although she was cordial to her Bible-believing husband and had moments of curiosity in her early years, Ball regarded persons of faith as "emotionally, physically, or intellectually weak."

When her dramatic conversion—which felt to her like a heart attack—occurred, the first words entering her mind were, "It's all true."

"This skeptical atheist turned church-going agnostic had somehow been struck Christian," she said.

She had spent most of her life in and around church communities—including parochial school—but was only a spectator of others' religion.

"My curiosity about faith was as much a reflection of feeling left out of something I knew little about, as it was a desire to connect with God," she said. "I can see in retrospect that even then, my interest in faith was more about connecting with a community of people than it was a desire to be transformed by faith in and a relationship with God."

Ball presents her life in Flirting With Faith for all those who, like her, view faith as distant, but who "have a longing in their hearts to do something more with their lives, but don't know where to begin."

"I believe that faith is a gift that comes by grace, not by the strength of an argument," she said. "No one could have convinced me that I should believe, so I never attempt to convince others that they should believe as I do.

"That said, I love to tell the story of what happened to me, how my life has changed as a result and how I have come to understand the gospel."

Since her conversion and subsequent challenges in her personal life—such as walking away from a high-paying job and grappling with family health issues—Ball said she doesn't struggle with unbelief as much as God's intervention in her life.

"As I continue to wrestle with the Scriptures and try to understand how God is operating in my life and in the world at large, I have many questions that might be interpreted by some as unbelief," she said. "I just view it as part of the journey. If people are following God and are wondering why it's not working, my encouragement to them is to cease striving, submit and follow. It's about giving up control."

Ball will promote the title at conferences this spring and a cross-country promotional tour of bookstores this summer.

To order Flirting With Faith, visit www.simonandschuster.biz or call 800-223-2336.

Popular humor blog spawns book centering on quirky Christian habits

The lighter side of Christian faith is explored in the new humor book Stuff Christians Like by Jonathan Acuff. The book, inspired by the author's popular blog, features essays on the quirky side of all things Christian.

It includes topics such as "Being slightly offended the pastor has a nicer car than you," "Telling testimonies that are exciting right up until the moment you became a Christian" and "Using 'Let me pray about it' as a euphemism for 'no.' "

The book features favorite items from the author's "Stuff Christians Like" Web site along with updated essays and additional content. The blog, which began in March 2008, has amassed more than a million site visits and generated more than 6,000 comments. Acuff began the blog as an illustrative response to how Christians sometimes hijack themes from popular culture, fashioning itself as a takeoff of the successful "Stuff White People Like" blog.

"I thought honestly I would do it for a week or two, but on day eight or nine, 4,300 people came and read the site," he said. "It just went viral."

The popularity caught Acuff off guard, and he was quick to point out that it's "been bigger than any degree of coolness or talent that I possess."

Acuff acknowledged the rarity of Christian humor books in the marketplace, a reason the book concept was initially rejected by publishers.

"There's not a great precedence to lean on," he said. "That's not to say people haven't done it well," he said, noting that Christian humor titles are not as prevalent as general market humor books.

He hopes that Stuff Christians Like can help broaden the humor section of Christian bookstores. Of the comments on the site, he noted that "a lot of those are from humorists. They're out there. My hope is, in addition to the book doing well, that it will help create a shelf that is Christian humor."

Acknowledging the potential for controversy when mixing faith and humor, Acuff said that he did not want to make "any joke to get in the way of the everlasting love of Christ." He did not descend into mockery, he added, trying instead to "write things that are funny without a victim. Mockery usually needs a victim."

Acuff said there was much more material on his blog, but the book has enough new material to attract readers.

"What I think is really neat, (if you read the book), you now have nine times that amount of content online for free," he said. "Readers that didn't know it as a blog will discover that, and blog readers will pick up the book."

Whether or not the additional material will end up in subsequent releases, Acuff joked, "I'd be surprised to see a Stuff Christian Teens Like or Stuff Christian Moms Like, but it's a down economy, so who knows? Difficult choices need to be made."

While Acuff keeps a good sense of humor, his new ministry addressed a serious situation last year. When his 6-year-old daughter raised the issue of starving children overseas, Acuff presented a fund-raising opportunity to his readers to give at his Web site in coordination with Samaritan's Purse, raising more than $60,000 in 25 days for orphanages in Vietnam.

"That's the power of social community and what it can accomplish," Acuff said.

Zondervan will promote the release with a print, broadcast and online advertising campaign and book tour.

For more information or to order, call Zondervan at 800-727-1309, or visit www.zondervan.com.

Click here to listen to the audio interview with Jonathan Acuff.