In 2022, we read many fantastic books. Our savvy team has curated a list of recommendations that will make your holiday shopping simple. Check out the titles we loved below and avoid the Christmas shopping rush!
An Evergreen Christmas: Treasured Classics for the Yuletide Season
From Dickens to Yeats, An Evergreen Christmas brings together twenty-nine stories and songs from some of the world’s most beloved writers in a beautiful and timeless new collection.
Whether you’re circled around the fire with family, searching for the perfect gift for a friend, or simply in pursuit of the best holiday reading, An Evergreen Christmas perfectly captures the essence of the yuletide season. This treasury is sure to warm your heart and light up your holiday season with stories from beloved authors including world-renowned literary greats like Louisa May Alcott, Charles Dickens, Hans Christian Andersen, and more!
A thoughtfully curated collection of treasured stories, An Evergreen Christmas captures the spirit of the holiday season through classic works celebrated by generations past and generations to come.
Buy it here.
Before the Coffee Gets Cold
In a small back alley of Tokyo, there is a café that has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. Local legend says that this shop offers something else besides coffee—the chance to travel back in time.
Over the course of one summer, four customers visit the café in the hopes of making that journey. But time travel isn’t so simple, and there are rules that must be followed. Most important, the trip can last only as long as it takes for the coffee to get cold.
Heartwarming, wistful, mysterious and delightfully quirky, Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s internationally bestselling novel explores the age-old question: What would you change if you could travel back in time?
Buy it here.
The Bible for Me: Bible Stories and Prayers
The Bible for Me: Bible Stories and Prayers is a new Bible storybook and the first title in The Bible for Me brand of related products for kids ages 3-7 from the team at Brentwood Studios and authors Amy Parker and Mike Nawrocki. The 50 stories are written and designed to share the story of God’s people and His love for each child, in a way that it is relevant and relatable to the reader. Each story ends with a prayer where the reader can easily insert the child’s name, making the stories uniquely personal. The book features fresh, colorful illustrations from Taylor Thompson Lynch.
This Bible storybook was written specifically to show God’s love and purpose for each unique child, making it clear that these timeless stories are meant for each and every one of us, here and now, today.
Buy it here.
Healing Out Loud: How to Embrace God’s Love When You Don’t Like Yourself
In this unique look at a one-year journey through counseling told from both sides of the couch, Sandi Brown―the founder of St. Louis’s largest Christian radio ministry, JOY FM―and her counselor, Dr. Michelle Caulk, walk through Sandi’s therapy journey, answering the question, “What do I do when I know God loves me, but I don’t like myself?”
When Sandi began her journey towards healing and freedom, she thought she was alone in her struggles. By working with Michelle, the two found that scores of women experience a disconnect between how they see themselves and God’s image.
Healing Out Loud captures many of the insecurities the modern woman faces in her walk with Christ. Written in conversational prose, Brown and Caulk’s combined voice creates an accessible path for readers to face their vulnerabilities with biblical insight.
Buy it here.
Feed These People: Slam Dunk Recipes for Your Crew
With five children and a close-knit community of family and friends, bestselling author, podcaster, and inspirational speaker Jen Hatmaker has been sharing her love of cooking and food with her fans for years. Now she’s compiled all her favorite sure-thing recipes into one personal and highly entertaining cookbook, including chapters like Food for Breakfast (or brunch so you can drink), Food for Your Picky Spouse or Spawn, and Food for When You Have No More Damns to Give. This is real food for real people, with recipes like Texas Migas, Green Chili Taco Cups, Risotto with Whatever You Have, Friday Night Roast Chicken (on a Thursday), Peach Corn Cakes, and so much more!
Paired with vibrant photography that’s as bold and lively as Jen herself, all recipes are sure to please, written for ordinary home cooks, and infused with personal notes, asides, and stories in her candid and irreverent style.
Buy it here.
Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know
As an organizational psychologist, Adam Grant is an expert on opening other people’s minds–and our own. As Wharton’s top-rated professor and the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Originals and Give and Take, one of his guiding principles is to argue like he’s right but listen like he’s wrong. With bold ideas and rigorous evidence, he investigates how we can embrace the joy of being wrong, harness the surprising advantages of impostor syndrome, bring nuance to charged conversations, and build schools, workplaces, and communities of lifelong learners. You’ll learn how an international debate champion wins arguments, how a Black musician persuades white supremacists to abandon hate, how a vaccine whisperer convinces concerned parents to immunize their children, and how Adam has coaxed Yankees fans to root for the Red Sox. Think Again reveals that we don’t have to believe everything we think or internalize everything we feel. It’s an invitation to let go of views that are no longer serving us well and prize mental flexibility, humility, and curiosity over foolish consistency. If knowledge is power, knowing what we don’t know is wisdom.
Buy it here.
Western Skies
Part prose, part album, and part photographic essay, Western Skies is a stunning homage to the mythologies of Texas.
Amid a series of road trips across West Texas, Austin-based singer-songwriter Darden Smith found himself writing songs at the wheel and taking Polaroid photographs of the stark and ghostly terrain. Inspired by the spirit of the landscape, Smith scribbled his observations in a notebook and found new life in old lyrics—and between the prose, the music, and the images he captured with his camera, Western Skies came vividly to life.
This beautifully designed and collectible book features everything Smith captured and created during his travels. The perfect companion piece to his latest album, also titled Western Skies, the book collects the sights and sounds of West Texas in a truly immersive and transportive way.
Buy it here.
Believe for It: Passing on Faith to the Next Generation
From the best-selling female gospel artist of all time CeCe Winans comes a heartfelt guide full of spirit, music, and faith. CeCe’s first book in over 10 years, Believe for It explores what it means to pass along wisdom and faith to generations to come.
Believe for It: Passing on Faith to the Next Generation beautifully recounts the pivotal experiences in CeCe’s life that have shaped her faith. From her childhood in Detroit and the miracle of motherhood to her award-winning music career, CeCe brings readers along for a story full of heart, passion, and wisdom acquired from her walk with God.
Inspired by Generations—her popular show and conference—CeCe includes thoughtful questions at the end of each chapter to help readers foster their own intergenerational conversations.
Buy it here.
Other Birds
From the acclaimed author of Garden Spells comes an enchanting tale of lost souls, lonely strangers, secrets that shape us, and how the right flock can guide you home.
Down a narrow alley in the small coastal town of Mallow Island, South Carolina, lies a stunning cobblestone building comprised of five apartments. It’s called The Dellawisp and it is named after the tiny turquoise birds who, alongside its human tenants, inhabit an air of magical secrecy.
When Zoey Hennessey comes to claim her deceased mother’s apartment at The Dellawisp, she meets her quirky, enigmatic neighbors including a girl on the run, a grieving chef whose comfort food does not comfort him, two estranged middle-aged sisters, and three ghosts. Each with their own story. Each with their own longings. Each whose ending isn’t yet written.
Delightful and atmospheric, Other Birds is filled with magical realism and moments of pure love that won’t let you go. Sarah Addison Allen shows us that between the real and the imaginary, there are stories that take flight in the most extraordinary ways.
Buy it here.
