To give you an idea of what I am looking for, I want to give you a list of authors I have read a lot of: Douglas Preston/Lincoln Child, Stephen King, Michael Crichton, J.K. Rowling, Janet Evanovich (Stephanie Plum series), Gregory Mcdonald (Fletch series), John Gardner (James Bond series), Michael Slade. If anyone can recommend authors based on my tastes indicated by the above it would be very much appreciated.
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hello harry potter
Charles Martin, Ted Dekker, Joel C. Rosenberg, Chris Well, Randy Alcorn, Gilbert Morris, and Michael Phillips are good authors with strong characters and good plot lines. Some suspense and mystery involved as well.
Karen Kingsbury
Jan Karon…wrote the Mitford series
Alton Gansky wrote Zero-G a Christain thriller
go to http://www.faithfulreader.com…great website, it has:
reviews
book excerpts
word of mouth
coming soon…there’s a list for January
I often go to the sister site: wwwbookreporter.com..I always find something new to read….
hmm, hard to recommend books by taste since I’ve not read several of those authors… but definitely try C.S. Lewis, and Alton Gansky. I’d also recommend G.K. Chesterton; he wrote weird stuff back in the early 20th century, and the “Father Brown” short stories.
I’m not sure how well this fits in with your list…
The “Camber of Culdi” books by Katherine Kurtz. This is a fantasy series set in medieval nearly-Britain (between 500 and 1000 C.E.). In this series, there is a race of (otherwise normal) people who possess psychic/magical powers. There is also the pervasive presence of the church (most like the Church of England in hierarchy and ritual). In the books, many of the main characters are priests *and* “magicians” (that word is not used), and magic normally *requires* religious ceremony to be practiced. There are also “healers”, essentially people with the Christian-magical talent of miraculous healing. I find it to be excellent, particularly the realism injected by the pervasiveness of the church in people’s lives. This may be offensive to non-Christians, but excellent for Christians who are fond of sorcery fantasy.
Jim, http://www.life-after-harry-potter.com
I’m a librarian, and most Christian authors seem more likely to write domestic novels — romances or family dramas, which isn’t really in line with your reading history. There’s always the Left Behind series by LaHaye and Jenkins, of course. One author you may want to try is James Scott Bell. His website at http://www.jamesscottbell.com/Site/Welco… seems to have some really good information.
What does faith have to do with it? Half of the authors you mentioned are on the S&*T list of the Pope and other “Christian” authorities.
A good book is a good book. Mark Twain is hilarious and so is Gearoge MacDonald Frasier, but I would think that if they were Muslim, or Hindu, or any other religeon.
I mean if you want some true Christian writers, check out Chaucer, or Bede, a Benedictine monk (though he wrote most history, but he did translat many Greek epics as well), or the unknown Christian who jotted down the epic poem Beowulf.
I don’t know if you’d count novels set in the Old Testament as Christian fiction, but the Women of Genesis series by Orson Scott Card is really great! The first book in the series is Sarah. There are still one or two novels to come in the series, too, I hear. Card is at least as good as any of your favorite authors (better, in my opinion)!
Give them a try! I really enjoyed them, and I’m an atheist, so they’ve got to be good to hold my attention, right?
Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis