Sarah Harper is driven, pursuing happiness in all the wrong places. She wants to do good and not hurt the people she loves, including her son, Mitchell, and her husband, Joe. But her drive to succeed overrides all else. It's not until she faces a chance encounter with heaven and spends time with the grandmother who prayed for her every day when she was a little girl that she begins to see how her own mother's bitterness created a hole in Sarah's life--a hole she has been trying to overcome for as long as she can remember.

Life is often messy. We hear people say, “My life is a mess,” or “This situation is a mess.” What they mean is that life has become difficult, painful or confusing. But God never promised us a trouble-free life. In fact, His Word tells us to expect the opposite. In John 16:33, Jesus says, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (NIV). In Blessed in the Mess, beloved Bible teacher Joyce Meyer shows us how to be blessed in the midst of life’s most challenging circumstances.

The book of Proverbs is a treasure trove of spiritual and practical wisdom that equips us to live our best lives. Knowledge is important, but if it isn't converted into action, it fails to create transformational change in our lives. It is important to gain a thoughtful and practical understanding of the seven foundational principles in the book of Proverbs....

Building on the premises of Power Thoughts and Living Beyond Your Emotions, Joyce Meyer examines the tremendous power of words. - which are the vehicles that convey our thoughts and emotions - and provides a series of guidelines for making sure that our talk is constructive, healthy, healing and used to good results. In a "Dictionary of God's Word" at the end of the book, Joyce provides dozens of scripture verses, arranged by topic, that she recommends reading and saying out loud as one way of using and claiming healing words.

God finds ways to reach out to us every day, offering a lifetime partnership filled with guidance on everything from major life issues to small, ordinary problems. The question is, are you listening?

Everyone has problems. But throughout more than 45 years of studying God’s Word, Joyce Meyer has learned how to find the answer for every problem you face in the Bible–and she wants to share it with you. In Overcoming Every Problem, Joyce helps you gain the ultimate wisdom you need when challenges arise. No matter how big or how deep the pain of your situation, you’ll be encouraged and inspired to trust God for better days ahead.

The average person has 70,000 thoughts every day, and many of those thoughts trigger a corresponding emotion. No wonder so many of us often feel like we're controlled by our emotions. Our lives would be much improved is we controlled them. Joyce Meyer discusses the way that the brain processes and stores memories and thoughts, and then - emotion by emotion - she explains how we can manage our reactions to those emotions.

What if there was a way to put a stop to your worrying before it steals your peace of mind? In The Answer to Anxiety, Joyce Meyer reveals truth from God’s Word that shows us how to focus on God when we’re feeling unsettled. She also teaches listeners practical steps based on Scripture that we can take when we need to face our fears. God doesn’t want you to live with worry and anxiety. And when you understand that He has a plan for you, you can experience the life-changing peace He offers.

We’re never going to be able to prevent people from saying or doing things that hurt our feelings. We will always have opportunities to get offended. But if we do things God’s way, we can choose to save ourselves a lot of misery and hardship. This doesn’t mean we allow people to abuse us. No, there is a time for confronting people and dealing with situations. However, the Bible commands us to love our enemies and forgive those who have wronged us, even when it feels impossible.

Everything is beautiful in its time. Life is a journey through beautiful and varied seasons, with a dynamic cadence and full of continued discovery. Embrace each season of your life, and learn to live into it fully with grace and help from Joyce Meyer. How to Age Without Getting Old equips us to become wise enough to embrace God's changing grace and the evolution of our calling to the next season of life.

Using Scripture and powerful real-life examples, Joyce Meyer reveals that we, not God, determine our level of intimacy with Him. She reminds us that Moses went alone to visit God on the mountaintop while Joshua and others stood at a distance from Him. And while at least seventy people traveled with Jesus when he preached, only twelve disciples were his close companions. Of the twelve, Peter, James and John were closer still. But only one of the three laid his head on Jesus' breast.

All My Knotted-Up Life is a beautifully crafted portrait of resilience and survival, a poignant reminder of God’s enduring faithfulness, and proof positive that if we ever truly took the time to hear people’s full stories . . . we’d all walk around slack-jawed.

Sue Monk Kidd's ravishing debut novel has stolen the hearts of reviewers and readers alike with its strong, assured voice. Set in South Carolina in 1964, The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed.

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Surêté du Québec and his team of investigators are called in to the scene of a suspicious death in a rural village south of Montreal. Jane Neal, a local fixture in the tiny hamlet of Three Pines, just north of the U.S. border, has been found dead in the woods. The locals are certain it’s a tragic hunting accident and nothing more, but Gamache smells something foul in these remote woods, and is soon certain that Jane Neal died at the hands of someone much more sinister than a careless bowhunter.

Penobscot Indian Molly Ayer is close to "aging out" out of the foster care system. A community-service position helping an elderly woman clean out her home is the only thing keeping Molly out of juvie and worse.... As she helps Vivian sort through her possessions and memories, Molly learns that she and Vivian aren’t as different as they seem to be. A young Irish immigrant orphaned in New York City, Vivian was put on a train to the Midwest with hundreds of other children whose destinies would be determined by luck and chance.

Award-winning journalist Elyse Singleton delivers what Essence calls “a gem - the perfect book to curl up with.”

Best friends Lilian and Myraleen, two African American women from rural Mississippi, travel to Europe during World War II to act as members of the Women’s Army Corps. During this time of segregation and destruction, both women discover love and heartbreak, triumph and defeat.

Only God knew why Jillian Slater agreed to return to New Orleans on the news that her father had finally drunk himself to death. It's not like they were close. She hadn't seen him - or her grandmother, the ice queen - in almost 20 years. But when Adella Atwater, the manager of her grandmother's apartment house, called and said her expenses would be paid if she'd fly in for the burial, a free trip to New Orleans was too intriguing to resist.

The underground mine fires ravaging Pennsylvania coal country have forced 11-year-old Brigid Howley and her family to seek refuge with her estranged grandparents, the formidable Gram and the black lung-stricken Gramp. Tragedy is no stranger to the Howleys, a proud Irish-American clan who takes strange pleasure in the "curse" laid upon them generations earlier by a priest who ran afoul of the Molly Maguires. The weight of this legacy rests heavily on a new generation, when Brigid, already struggling to keep her family together, makes a grisly discovery in a long-abandoned bootleg mine shaft.

Cassie Madison has it all: A high-powered advertising career; a stylish Manhattan apartment; and a sophisticated, rich, and gorgeous fiancé. It's a far cry from her childhood in Walton, Georgia, home of the annual Kudzu Festival and hot, sticky summers. And then there are all the bad memories, the heartache. When Cassie's estranged sister calls to say that her father is dying, Cassie knows it's time to set aside her feelings and go home and face the sister she hasn't seen in 15 years.

On any particular day, thousands upon thousands of people pass through New York City's Grand Central Terminal, through the whispering gallery, beneath the ceiling of stars, and past the information booth and its beckoning four-faced clock, to whatever destination is calling them. It is a place where people come to say hello and good-bye. And each person has a story to tell.

During the Great Depression, Jeb Nubey is running from the law when he meets three abandoned children. With nowhere else to go the group passes a stormy night in a comforting church. When they are discovered, a case of mistaken identity ensues. It seems the congregation has been waiting for their new pastor, a widower with three kids. Looks like more trouble for Jeb. Yet the chance for a steady job and three squares a day is too good to turn down.

Greta Cahill never believed she would leave her village in the west of Ireland until she found herself on a ship bound for New York, along with her sister Johanna and a boy named Michael Ward. Labeled a "softheaded goose" by her family, Greta discovers that in America she can fall in love, raise her own family, and earn a living.

Though Peak Plantation has been in her family for generations, Leslie Nichols can't wait to rid herself of the farm left to her by her estranged grandmother Maggie. But Leslie isn't the only one with a claim to Peak. Jay Davenport, Peak's reclusive caretaker, has his own reasons for holding onto the land bequeathed to him by Leslie's grandmother. Before she died, Maggie hinted at a terrible secret surrounding Adele Laveau, a lady's maid who came to Peak during the 1930s and died under mysterious circumstances.

Diane McKinney-Whetstone, the award-winning and best-selling author of Tumbling, presents Trading Dreams at Midnight - - an Essence Book Club Recommended Read. Back in 1984, 15-year-old Neena's mother left and never came back. And now Neena is following in her footsteps.

The Van Ripper women have been the talk of Tarrytown, New York, for centuries. Some say they're angels; some say they're crooks. In their tumbledown "Stitchery", not far from the stomping grounds of the legendary Headless Horseman, the Van Ripper sisters - Aubrey, Bitty, and Meggie - are said to knit people's most ardent wishes into beautiful scarves and mittens, granting them health, success, or even a blossoming romance. But for the magic to work, sacrifices must be made - and no one knows that better than the Van Rippers.

Malcolm Little's parents have always told him that he can achieve anything, but from what he can tell, that's nothing but a pack of lies - after all, his father's been murdered, his mother's been taken away, and his dreams of becoming a lawyer have gotten him laughed out of school. There's no point in trying, he figures, and lured by the nightlife of Boston and New York, he escapes into a world of fancy suits, jazz, girls, and reefer.

Ten-year-old Pearl Spence is a daydreamer, playing make-believe to escape life in Oklahoma's Dust Bowl in 1935. The Spences have their share of misfortune, but as the sheriff's family, they've got more than most in this dry, desolate place. They're who the town turns to when there's a crisis or a need. Pearl is proud of her loving, strong family, though she often wearies of tracking down her mentally impaired older sister or wrestling with her grandmother's unshakable belief in a God. Then a mysterious man bent on revenge tramps into her town of Red River.

Life under Apartheid has created a secure future for Robin Conrad, a 10-year-old white girl living with her parents in 1970s Johannesburg. In the same nation but worlds apart, Beauty Mbali, a Xhosa woman in a rural village in the Bantu homeland of the Transkei, struggles to raise her children alone after her husband's death. Both lives have been built upon the division of race, and their meeting should never have occurred...until the Soweto Uprising.

Summer 1995: Ten-year-old Joan, her mother, and her younger sister flee her father’s explosive temper and seek refuge at her mother’s ancestral home in Memphis. This is not the first time violence has altered the course of the family’s trajectory. Half a century earlier, Joan’s grandfather built this majestic house in the historic Black neighborhood of Douglass—only to be lynched days after becoming the first Black detective in the city. Joan tries to settle into her new life, but family secrets cast a longer shadow than any of them expected.

When Katie Garrett gets the news that she’s received an inheritance from the grandmother she hardly knew, it couldn’t have come at a better time. She flees Boston and travels to rural Texas. There, she’s greeted by her distant cousin Scarlett. Friendly and flamboyant, Scarlett couldn’t be more different from sensible Katie. And as they begin the task of sorting through their grandmother’s possessions, they discover letters and photographs that uncover the hidden truths about their shared history, and the long-forgotten tragedy of the New London school explosion of 1937 that binds them.