I have read and enjoyed several of the novels written by James Markert over the last few years. His writing style is fun and engaging, and his ability to capture my attention and hold it is pretty steady. With this novel, however, I had a harder time staying connected to it for some reason.

For the life of me, I cannot point to anything I didn’t like about Midnight At The Tuscany Hotel. It just didn’t grab my attention like his other novels have. Don’t get me wrong, the story line was great, and it was an intriguing plot, set in a time period I love, and had an air of the mystical with an emphasis on Greek mythology. I loved that part of it.

All in all, it was a great book. I just had a difficult time staying engaged for whatever reason. I may come back to this book in a year or two and read it again, and probably enjoy it immensely. At that point, I will probably be able to enjoy it more fully.

As for Markert, I truly enjoy reading his material. He is near the top of my list of favorite authors, and I look forward to his upcoming books. In the meantime, if you have enjoyed his other books, you should grab this one as well.

Ratings & Details For Midnight At The Tuscany Hotel:

• Genre/Style: Fiction
• Story/Plot: 8 of 10 stars
• Spiritual Content: 6 of 10 stars
• Readability/Flow: 8 of 10 stars
• Cover: 9 of 10 stars
• Overall Rating: 7 of 10 stars

I received this book free from Harper Collins Christian Publishing as part of their BookLook Bloggers review program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

The post Midnight At The Tuscany Hotel by James Markert appeared first on JeffRandleman.com.

I have been a longtime fan and reader of the leadership material produced by John Maxwell.

I was first introduced to Maxwell at an InJoy conference several years ago that our ministry staff went to in the Kansas City area, and was immediately hooked. Since that time, I have read several of his books, and gained a lot of leadership abilities from doing so.

Maxwell spent the first portion of his career in ministry, and that influenced a lot of his leadership abilities. Drawing lessons from the Word of God was a natural connection, and an excellent source of foundational material for successful leadership. Seeing a need in contemporary society for leadership, and recognizing the void that existed in this area, Maxwell began to implement biblical principles into the leadership framework, and has since become a mainstay in the leadership community.

It was only natural, then, to produce a Bible with footnotes based on a theme of leadership. Inside The Leadership Bible, Maxwell has given overviews of each book, with emphasis on leadership material found within that book. From there, on various pages throughout Scripture, you can find various examples of the Laws of Leadership, and leadership profiles of people found within the pages of God’s Word.

This edition of The Maxwell Leadership Bible is hardbound, and is presented in a classy, durable fashion for serious study of God’s Word and the leadership principles it contains. It is an excellent resource, and one I recommend for anyone in leadership. The lessons contained in the Word of God, and insights drawn from those lessons by Maxwell, are a tremendous help for anyone studying God’s Word.

The only negative aspect, in my opinion, is that it is in the NIV 2011 translation. I prefer other translations over this one, and you can get this in the NKJV as well.

Ratings & Details For The Maxwell Leadership Bible:

• Genre/Style: Bible
• Purpose/Premise: 10 of 10 stars
• Spiritual Content: 10 of 10 stars
• Readability/Flow: 10 of 10 stars
• Cover: 10 of 10 stars
• Overall Rating: 10 of 10 stars

I received this book free from Harper Collins Christian Publishing as part of their BookLook Bloggers review program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

The post The Maxwell Leadership Bible appeared first on JeffRandleman.com.

The first time I was introduced to the writing of Warren W. Wiersbe was when I was a student at Ozark Christian College, in a preaching class. One of our assigned readings was a small book called Elements Of Preaching. It was simple and yet profound, and formed some of the basis upon which I still craft my sermons and lessons twenty-five years later.

It didn’t take me long to track down a few other books by Wiersbe to add to my library, each as helpful as that first one. When I saw that there was a new Wiersbe Study Bible, I was immediately interested in looking it over. And I was not disappointed.

Of course, the text of the Bible is not what is on review here; it is the study notes that accompany the text itself. And these notes are phenomenal. Warren Wiersbe has a very intellectual mind, and that is very apparent in any of his books that I have read over the years. But these notes, while containing much that is challenging to the thought process, also remain very approachable and are not above the head of the average Bible reader.

The Wiersbe Study Bible has several great features that can help anyone striving to learn more about the Bible. Each book has a detailed introduction and an outline. Along with the overview, each book contains a section called “Be Transformed,” which is a practical application section, outlining several key aspects of each book for daily growth. Add to this the study notes, special notes, and cross references, and you have an excellent tool for spiritual growth.

While it is a bigger Bible, and may be bulky for someone to carry around to much, that is the trade-off for all the extra material this contains. To me, that’s an acceptable trade.

This is an easy Bible to read. The text is at a size that’s easily viewable, and the footnotes font isn’t small like some study Bibles tend to have. All in all, I really enjoyed this study Bible. The only factor I didn’t care for – and this is personal preference – is that it is in the New King James version. I prefer New American Standard for my personal study. But even this isn’t a big problem, since it can be helpful to read the text in multiple translations to get a better idea of what it’s saying.

I highly recommend this Bible as a study tool and reference for anyone wanting to grow in their knowledge of God’s Word. It’s an excellent resource.

Ratings & Details For The Wiersbe Study Bible:

• Genre/Style: Bible
• Purpose/Premise: 10 of 10 stars
• Spiritual Content: 10 of 10 stars
• Readability/Flow: 10 of 10 stars
• Cover: 10 of 10 stars
• Overall Rating: 10 of 10 stars

I received this book free from Harper Collins Christian Publishing as part of their BookLook Bloggers review program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

The post The Wiersbe Study Bible appeared first on JeffRandleman.com.

Fiction is fun to read, but when fiction has a point to it, that seems to make it even better. Some of my favorite examples of this are novels written by Andy Andrews, such as The Traveler’s Gift, The Noticer, and The Heart Mender. In that vein, David Rawlings has written a fictional novel with a solid point in his book The Baggage Handler.

The premise is simple. Three different people have their baggage mixed up by an airline. Each of them are struggling with significant issues in their immediate lives. As they arrive at the location where they can receive the correct baggage, they each meet the Baggage Handler. This young man speaks some pointed truths into each of their lives that they may not have wanted to hear, but they needed to hear.

The Baggage Handler is a quick and easy book to read, but as the pages turned, I realized that Rawlings holds some deep insights into more lives than just the three fictional lives presented in his book. The truths he presents are simple, yet profound, and the impacted my thoughts in a way that was fresh and gave some new perspective to some of the baggage that I find myself carrying in my own life.

The dust jacket calls this a modern day parable. And as a short, east to read story with a profound point, that description is apt. I encourage you to pick up a copy and read it. Hopefully, it will challenge you just as much as it challenged me to take a new look at the burdens I carry around with me, and to see how God would rather take them for me. I think you’ll be blessed.

Ratings & Details For The Baggage Handler:

• Genre/Style: Fiction
• Story/Plot: 10 of 10 stars
• Spiritual Content: 6 of 10 stars
• Readability/Flow: 9 of 10 stars
• Cover: 8 of 10 stars
• Overall Rating: 9 of 10 stars

I received this book free from Harper Collins Christian Publishing as part of their BookLook Bloggers review program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

The post The Baggage Handler by David Rawlings appeared first on JeffRandleman.com.

I recently joined a book club designed for leadership building called LeaderBooks. The book selected for March was Digital Minimalism, by Cal Newport. Here are a few of my thoughts concerning the book, and my reactions to it.

Our culture is noisy, and a voice of reason in the midst of that noise is needed. Cal Newport strives to be that voice with his book Digital Minimalism. The subtitle seems highly appropriate for the culture we live in: Choosing A Focused Life In A Noisy World.

The premise Newport begins with is that we have been hooked by the digital conglomerates that operate in our world, and we are no longer the user being targeted with need to fulfill. No, we are the product being sold, and our consistent tapping, clicking and swiping is an addictive habit that is designed to keep our attention focused in on the apps we use. Because, the longer we use them, the more money they make.

In response to this, Newport calls for a heavily moderated digital detox. His approach is simple. First, remove all optional digital use from your life for thirty days. After that time, as you allow certain products back in, evaluate just how effective they are at meeting your needs, and if there is a better tool, use it instead. Then, finally, you set the parameters that it can operate under. The digital product no longer has mastery; you do.

Through the book, Newport also gives several practical tactics for achieving these goals. One in particular stood out to me. It’s the practice of embracing Slow Media. This approach is not a radical elimination of all forms of media, just a slow and balanced approach to it. Of course, this is a vastly simplified description of the concept, and I encourage you to read Digital Minimalism to gain a better understanding of it.

The goal is to become more mindful of what we consume, and not just rush through an ever-increasing stream of clickbait and post comments that serve little to no purpose of achieving what we most want out of our digital lives.

Newport’s theories seem pretty drastic, but just like anything else in life, if you can’t control it, then it gains control over you. That cannot be more true of the digital reality we live in at the moment.

You may want to consider reading this book to see how it can impact your own digital life. You might even consider taking some of its practices and applying them to your own life. But even if you don’t, I encourage you to take a hard look at your digital use and take steps to ensure that you remain in control of it.

The post Digital Minimalism appeared first on JeffRandleman.com.

One of the areas I love to read about is the area of marriage and family. I have quite an extensive library on these subjects, and am always looking for more great resources in both areas. So when I saw a book that dealt with finances, and how it impacts a marriage, I was instantly interested.

However, I was in for a disappointment. Your Money, Your Marriage had all the potential of being a great asset and help, but it fell far short of that mark. The book was full of what I’m sure were supposed to witty remarks, but felt more like inside jokes and sly innuendo. It got to the point where I dreaded picking it back up, fearing what I might find as I read on.

However, I hate to leave a book unfinished, in the hopes that it might turn around and offer something beneficial, so I plodded on, continuing to read along. I’m sure that some people will love the style in which this is written, probably even gaining a lot from it. I found nothing that I felt was inaccurate or wrong, I just could not relate to the manner in which it was put forth.

Unfortunately, I cannot recommend this book. There are better books and programs out there, on the subjects of both money and marriage. I’d begin with those, and go from there. In fact, I’d venture that there are even some books that wed the two topics together well.

Ratings & Details For Your Money, Your Marriage:

• Genre/Style: Marriage/Finances
• Story/Plot or Purpose/Premise: 5 of 10 stars
• Spiritual Content: 5 of 10 stars
• Readability/Flow: 3 of 10 stars
• Cover: 8 of 10 stars
• Overall Rating: 4 of 10 stars

I received this book free from Harper Collins Christian Publishing as part of their BookLook Bloggers review program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

The post Your Money, Your Marriage by Cherie & Brian Lowe appeared first on JeffRandleman.com.

I am a big Tom Clancy and John Grisham fan. I enjoy the legal aspects the Grisham brings, and the action and political thrillers that Clancy writes are spellbinding. So when I was first introduced to Robert Whitlow, I compared him to a mixture of those two authors. After reading several of his novels, I still think that’s the case to a large degree.

Whitlow definitely has his own writing style, even though it may be reminiscent of other authors. And because of that I have thoroughly enjoyed every novel I have had the chance to read by Whitlow. And the more I read, the more I enjoy his work.

That’s the case with the latest novel to come from his pen, Chosen People. Whitlow takes a look at the Jewish/Arab cohabitation that exists in Jerusalem, with the threat of antagonistic neighbors in the surrounding nations, and creates a storyline that is compelling and captivating. His main character is a young Arab women who is an attorney in the US, who takes on a civil case representing a family that suffered during a terrorist attack. As she researches the claim, along with the help of a Jewish American lawyer, they get wrapped up in the underground world of terror and espionage, unsure of who they can trust.

With several different subplots running through the book, Whitlow has woven a tale that can keep your attention for the duration of the book, and leave you wanting more. While some of the dialog could be a bit better edited – it felt a little cheesy at times – for the most part, Chosen People was very well written, and worth taking the time to read. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it as much as I did.

Ratings & Details For Chosen People:

• Genre/Style: Legal Fiction
• Story/Plot: 10 of 10 stars
• Spiritual Content: 10 of 10 stars
• Readability/Flow: 9 of 10 stars
• Cover: 9 of 10 stars
• Overall Rating: 9 of 10 stars

I received this book free from Harper Collins Christian Publishing as part of their BookLook Bloggers review program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

The post Chosen People by Robert Whitlow appeared first on JeffRandleman.com.

We are an emotional culture. We might even be an obsessively emotional culture. And with such a wide and volatile range of emotional thoughts and feelings, we are in desperate need of establishing control in this area of our lives.

Unfortunately, this is something that many people don’t realize, or if they do, they have a vague and indistinct understanding of the need for something more in their inner lives. That is why a book such as Boundaries For Your Soul is so critically needed by so many people. Because of the range and depth of our emotions, we can become overwhelmed easily and feel like we are sinking in over our heads with no hope of help.

What authors Alison Cook and Kimberly Miller have done is create a blueprint of what we need, how we can find it, and what it can do for our emotional inner life. With their insights, we can stop allowing our emotions to control us, and begin to exert more control over those emotions instead, and use them to our benefit. And by placing God at the foundation, they offer a solution to our emotional problems that so many other “self help” book fail to do, because such help can come from no other place than the one who created us and our emotions.

For the past several months, I have been striving to organize and deepen my own inner world, and have pursued several books and podcasts to help me do so. Boundaries For Your Soul has played right into that pursuit for my life, and I think you might benefit from it as well.

If you are seeking to move from a conflicted, overwhelming, instability in your emotional inner world, to one filled with confidence and peace, then you definitely need to read Boundaries For Your Soul. I recommend that you grab a copy and dig into it.

Ratings & Details For Boundaries For Your Soul:

• Genre/Style: Spiritual Growth
• Purpose/Premise: 10 of 10 stars
• Spiritual Content: 10 of 10 stars
• Readability/Flow: 8 of 10 stars
• Cover: 8 of 10 stars
• Overall Rating: 9 of 10 stars

I received this book free from Harper Collins Christian Publishing as part of their BookLook Bloggers review program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

The post Boundaries For Your Soul by Alison Cook and Kimberly Miller appeared first on JeffRandleman.com.

As a parent of a large family, I see the need for spiritual guidance in the life off my family as a key element. Because of this, I am always looking for resources that can help my wife and I lead and train our children to be the best that they can be, and all that God desires them to be.

Over the years, we have gathered quite a collection of great parenting resources, from inspirational books, to DVD based curriculum. But we haven’t really found a devotional that focuses on parenting that really impacted us where we felt like we needed it.

That changed when we found Devotions For Sacred Parenting by Gary Thomas. This book is a phenomenal resource that we have found to be very useful. I have been through the book more than once over the past couple of months, and my wife is excited by what I have shared with her. She is looking forward to utilizing it in the coming days and weeks.

Most devotional books seem to be brief and shallow. But Gary Thomas has created a book full of devotions that are more than a brief snippet of inspirational thought. They have meat to them, and leave you with a few questions to consider afterward. The book is not a daily devotional, but a weekly one, with only 52 devotions included. But that doesn’t present a problem, since we have found that it takes more than a few days to fully digest the topic that Thomas sparks in our thoughts and prayers.

If you are a parent, especially if you have younger kids or teens, I highly encourage you to pick up a copy of Gary Thomas’ Devotions For Sacred Parenting. It will be the best resource on your shelf.

Ratings & Details For Devotions For Sacred Parenting:

• Genre/Style: Devotions
• Purpose/Premise: 10 of 10 stars
• Spiritual Content: 10 of 10 stars
• Readability/Flow: 10 of 10 stars
• Cover: 10 of 10 stars
• Overall Rating: 10 of 10 stars

I received this book free from Harper Collins Christian Publishing as part of their BookLook Bloggers review program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

The post Devotions For Sacred Parenting by Gary Thomas appeared first on JeffRandleman.com.

Most of the time, I read books that create an opportunity for growth and give me things to think about. But occasionally, I feel the need to throw a fictional novel or two into the mix and simply enjoy a good story. That is what I have done for the past couple of weeks, and especially so with this book, Formula Of Deception, by Carrie Stuart Parks. I have only read a couple of her books, this one and When Death Draws Near, which I reviewed in the fall of 2016. And so far, I have enjoyed them both.

Formula Of Deception is a story set in Alaska in modern times, but with a family secret that has been lurking under the surface since World War II. Murphy Anderson is trying to survive life after the death of her twin sister, and is having trouble getting her feet underneath her. When she falls into the opportunity to use her artistic skills as a forensic artist, she stumbles upon a secret that has been buried for more than half a century.

As she discovers more and more, she falls deeper into the grip of a family determined to keep the truth hidden, and begins to question her own sanity in the process. With several plot twists and turns that will catch you off guard, the story that Murphy Anderson unravels will keep you riveted to the point that you won’t be able to put this book down.

As with When Death Draws Near, I thoroughly enjoyed Formula Of Deception. I suspect that I will have to find a few other novels by Carrie Stuart Parks to enjoy in the near future. If you enjoy suspense fiction with a Christian worldview, I suggest you do the same.

Ratings & Details For Formula Of Deception:

• Genre/Style: Christian Fiction
• Story/Plot: 8 of 10 stars
• Spiritual Content: 7 of 10 stars
• Readability/Flow: 8 of 10 stars
• Cover: 10 of 10 stars
• Overall Rating: 7 of 10 stars

I received this book free from Harper Collins Christian Publishing as part of their BookLook Bloggers review program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

The post Formula Of Deception by Carrie Stuart Parks appeared first on JeffRandleman.com.