Flower (Maid of Murder), a librarian, diversifies the popular Amish niche with this unsuccessful cozy. The premise promises: Chloe Humphrey is a 24-year-old geek hired to direct technology services at a tiny college in Ohio’s Amish country. A sad family history is packed in her baggage. Driving to her new home in Appleseed Creek, Chloe meets a young Amish woman, Becky, who needs rescue from two local thugs harassing her as she walks down the road. Thus begins the novel’s central relationship, soon complicated by Chloe’s work environment, a car accident that kills an Amish bishop, and Becky’s hunky brother Timothy, who has left the Amish but is still righteous enough to be a Mennonite. Unfortunately, the characters are cardboard. The bad guys are cartoony (“he grinned at me, tobacco juice trailing down his lower lip”); the theology of the Amish implausible (“there is not one right way to be obedient to the Lord”). Flower offers imaginative touches: pets with character (a crabby cat named Gigabyte). Amish cozies can work, but Flower needs to work on making characters credible and compelling. Agent: Nicole Resciniti. (July)

Hunt (The Nativity Story) bakes up a Southern confection of a novel that’s on the sweet side but satisfying. The three Caldwell sisters are as different as can be, though two of them are twins. Carlene left their small home town of Peculiar, Fla., to sing on Broadway, but botched throat surgery steals her voice and sends her home, where twin Darlene is still nurturing jealousy of her glamorous sister despite her own considerable but more domestic talents. Magnolia, the youngest, has a sad backstory, a set of quirks, and two scene-stealing dogs, Lucy and Ricky. Hunt folds into this recipe for family dramedy two men, tangled family history, and smalltown dynamics. The result is deeply engaging characters that readers will care about—enough to overlook some minor problems with credibility and coincidence in plot development. Hunt writes with crisp confidence. Readers will appreciate the bonus of Southern dessert recipes from Darlene’s kitchen, unless they’re watching cholesterol. Agent: Danielle Egan-Miller, Browne & Miller Literary Associates. (June)

The second volume of Peterson’s Land of the Lone Star series centers on Laura Marquardt and her family, Union supporters in Corpus Christi, Tex., shortly after the Civil War is over. The conflict has ended, but feelings are high and raw. Those who supported the losing side are quick to react to the black Union troops stationed in the city. Against that backdrop, Laura meets Union Capt. Brandon Reid. Laura’s younger and immature sister, meanwhile, casts her lot with former Confederate lieutenant Malcolm Lowe, whom Reid is asked to keep an eye on when incidents of vengeance occur. Peterson has done her history homework and writes with the confidence acquired over the course of authoring more than 90 novels. Dialogue moves things along, and Brandon and Laura’s relationship is chaste, in keeping with Christian fiction, as well as clever. The villain is not deep, but a sprinkling of social concern about racial issues adds some substance. Peterson’s many fans will certainly be pleased with this foray into Texas history. (June)

If auditions were held for a replacement for Oprah Winfrey.1—the early Oprah, who was vulnerable, open, girlfriendly, and not a billionaire—TerKeurst would make a short list. This mom of five had a breakout hit with Made to Crave, and her newest should also resonate. TerKeurst is open about her moments of losing it—especially at home, saying nasty things in the heat of the moment to her best-loved ones. But after those confessions come tips and tricks for being less emotionally reactive. There’s a bit of scientific and psychological discussion of these states, but mostly she presents psychologically acute insights that will be familiar to those with some self-awareness through therapy, 12 steps, journaling, or other self-help methods. She does it in a distinctive voice and with Bible in hand. While there’s no groundbreaking psychology, her voice is fresh and friendly. It will be most welcome to Oprah’s large audience of suburban mothers who are currently in need of a guiding light, as long as they’re open to advice with a distinctly Christian inflection. (Aug.)

Pop culture expert Romanowski (Eyes Wide Open) offers a subtle and surprising thesis: far from being censorious, American Protestants have for a century had a formative, complex, often cooperative relationship with the Hollywood film industry through a variety of commission, councils, and representatives seeking to use film to promote and improve the nation’s moral health. The book brims with historical evidence—gathered from interviews and periodicals and painstakingly footnoted—that proves and provides nuance to Romanowski’s argument. The historian spends some time getting going, and readers may become impatient with prose that plods as the author reconstructs past events and alliances. By contrast, the portion of his account that deals with such recent phenomena as the development of a Christian film market seems too brief. Especially fascinating is the illumination of the cultural and political forces that developed culture wars in the entertainment arena. The book will be most useful for students of film and popular culture, because as a read it’s dull. But anyone who thinks that Hollywood has become decadent ought to read this book. Such a complaint is as old as the industry itself. (July)

This latest volume in the I Speak for Myself series offers short, readable, personal essays by 45 men on being Muslim in America. Some were born into the faith, others converted, and they are an amazing variety of ethnicities and races. But they are all self-aware, happy with their faith, and as American as every other New York Yankees fan or kid who grew up with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. These men have followed different faith journeys, and their stories introduce readers to the diverse branches within Islam. This simple, friendly, and necessary book belongs on high school and public library shelves. Would it could be required reading for the half of Americans who have an unfavorable view of Islam. (June)

Contemporary statistics show that depression is startlingly common—the plague of modern life. It can be hard to treat, and it’s painful not only to the sufferer but also to those around him or her. Winter (Perfecting Ourselves to Death), a psychiatrist and theology professor, helpfully surveys the field, explaining current understandings and research, sprinkling his exposition with illustrations drawn from his own life, both as a psychiatrist and as someone who has suffered major depression. He also draws on scripture, which can be particularly helpful to those who are religious and can find some relief and echo in the groaning and lamenting that scripture gives voice to. Theological understandings of depression are rare; most mental health practitioners will tread carefully around the subject of faith because discussing faith is usually off-limits. But for some who suffer depression, scripture’s “door of hope” can be part of a comprehensive therapeutic response to the plague of inner darkness. (June)

A father-and-son team of writing teachers—Rami Shapiro is a prolific author (The Sacred Art of Lovingkindness) as well as rabbi—takes a circuitous approach to the process of writing. The authors first construct a spiritual framework of multiple levels of consciousness, then proceed through those levels—body, heart, mind, soul, and spirit—with explanation and writing prompts. It’s a little abstruse and mystical, but the writing prompts are wonderfully fun and liberate the imagination. The book reads at times like “you had to be there”—it’s based on a writing retreat/workshop the authors have led for seven years, so they are writing from what has worked. Still, some readers will think that the exercise of writing letters to your enemies is more therapy than craft development. Others will have a creative ride, gain some spiritual insight, and learn a little about Martin Buber and the cris de coeur found in the Hebrew Bible. (May)

In this debut novel from Blackaby, fourth-generation member of the storied Blackaby family of evangelical Christians, imagination outstrips writing craft. Ninth-grade friends Cody and Jade are plunged on a wild journey when Cody is made keeper of a mysterious book from an antique bookshop run by an elderly man. Their surroundings and the people they meet become increasingly fantastical as they plunge into a new world where people are not who they seem to be, and the book is the center of a struggle between realms. This inaugurates a trilogy that young fans of the fantastic will like for its fast-paced action. But the prose is painfully overwritten: an excess of adverbs (“Tiana probed curiously”), clunky dialogue (“So you guys are on a quest?”), awkward phrasing (“Cody bit his lip, or worse”). Young readers deserve better writing; while classified as young adult, the novel would better suit middle-grade readers. (June) ■