Ok, so I don’t know about you but now that the kids are back in school and Bill is back on the road I have more time to read and I do love to read so please, please if you read something you love either for fun or personal growth, etc please share it with me!  Today I just want to share a few, some of which are on my “wish list” after I finish what I have already started reading and then there’s my friend Lynette Eason and truly I love her writing so much that I can honestly say if you like Murder Mystery/ Romance she is amazing and we have a friend Mark Gilroy who wrote “Cuts Like a Knife” which is a page turner and has another amazing book coming out in October titled, “Every Breath You Take” – here’s a trailer for his new book: http://networkedblogs.com/ByUKH

“Life is relationships; the rest is just details.” We are designed for relationships, yet they often bring us pain. In this paradigm-shifting book, Dr. Gary Smalley unravels the DNA of relationships: We are made for three great relationships—with God, others, and ourselves—and all relationships involve choice. Gary exposes a destructive relationship dance that characterizes nearly every relationship conflict, and he offers five new dance steps that will revolutionize relationships. The DNA of Relationships, the cornerstone book in Gary Smalley’s relationship campaign, will help you learn to take personal responsibility, create a safe environment, keep their battery charged, listen with the heart, and adopt a no-losers policy. It will revolutionize your marriage, family, friendships, and work relationships!

Just in case you missed this next one when I mentioned it before, this was written by Ramon Presson:

Is This as Good as It Gets? Personal crises and disappointments have led many to the pessimistic conclusion that “my life sucks.” Underneath the contemporary slang are universal and timeless questions about the human condition. People of every age, in every kind of circumstance have wondered to themselves and others: Will my life ever be better than this? Is this as good as it gets? This book is an honest and compassionate look at the real struggles we face in a broken world where bad things do happen. Ramon Presson, a marriage and family counselor, describes his own significant personal struggles, including hospitalization for depression. Using the letter that Paul wrote to the Philippians from prison, Presson shares that hope and joy are possible even when life disappoints. Full of practical suggestions for how you can live with purpose and meaning right in the middle of your everyday struggles, When Will My Life Not Suck? is a hopeful treatment of human suffering from someone who has personally lived it and counseled others through the wilderness.

When does true love give in? When does true love push back? Break Through by Dr. Tim Clinton and Pat Springle shows you how to love and how to set effective limits so that everybody wins.

While most of our relationships may be healthy and satisfying, we often have one or two important people who change the rules and drive us crazy–a deadbeat dad, an alcoholic spouse, a wayward child, a demanding boss, a lazy roommate.

When you really care about someone, it’s easy to get stuck in painful, even destructive patterns–caving in to a spouse’s manipulation, ignoring a live-at-home son’s irresponsibility, not confronting a friend’s addiction. We excuse people again and again, and then kick ourselves for not setting better boundaries.

When we act out of enmeshment and codependency, we may think we are experiencing love, but it’s a shallow substitute for the love God longs for us to share and enjoy. Break Through helps you exchange manipulative and unhealthy relationships for reciprocal relationships that honor boundaries and allow each person the freedom to take responsibility for his or her own choices.

This important book, with its transformational tools and insightful illustrations from leading Christian counselor Tim Clinton and noted author Pat Springle, will guide you in not only breaking through to better relationships but making big changes for the better.

Their expert insights will help you:

•  Identify why you gravitate toward certain relationships, and why you stay
•  Discern the warning signs of an unhealthy relationship
•  Live within your limits, and help others to do the same
•  Redefine love, trust–and your responsibility to the people you care about
•  Learn which choices and behaviors cause relationship troubles
•  Experience the power and freedom of forgiveness

With proven principles for learning to say yes when you want to and no when you need to, you’ll discover how to give up your need to please, rescue, fix, or control anyone else. Leave others’ unrealistic expectations behind. Speak the hard truth to those who have hurt you. And exchange harmful relationship habits for healthy ones.

Like a GPS that guides you through the detours in your travels, Break Through offers sure navigation across the landscape of troubled relationships, giving you a saner perspective, along with practical steps and valuable tools that can protect you from the controlling, irresponsible behaviors of others. And the study questions, checklists, and inspirational stories in this book will help you fulfill your deepest potential for connecting to others in authentic ways.

Within these pages is your moment: the moment when you break through to the love that God longs for you to experience with the people who matter most!

Spunky and outgoing, nothing much bothers medical examiner Serena Hopkins–except for the thought of falling in love again. But when a serial killer is picking off her former classmates, Serena’s life becomes intertwined with her old high school crush, FBI agent Dominic Allen. Is the secret she’s keeping putting her next on the killer’s hit list? Can she trust Dominic with the truth before it’s too late?

Intense, emotional, and fast-paced, When a Heart Stops will have readers up late as they race to the finish to find out what happens.

Have a great week and take the time to crack open your favorite book and chill for a bit – you owe it to yourself!  🙂

God Bless,

Janet Scott