I need to update the adult fiction section. We havenot had anything new in a while. I came across Jill Eileen Smith's collection of Wives through the Bible. This is old enough that I could probably get a lot of it used. I have read one book. I have read a lot of the reviews on Goodreads. My question is How much sex is included here? I am with a Mennonite church and they don't want any sex in the books. Christian fiction sometimes gets more graphic than the Mennonites tolerate.
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Morlee Maynard gave a great list of good authors. I would also like to add these authors to her list: Denise Hunter, Laura Frantz, Roseanna White, Susan May Warren, Jennifer Delamere, and Abigail Wilson. All of them are spiritually sound. We have a large readership of Christian fiction. We vet every book since a recent publishing trend has been of wholesome material, yet sometimes not presenting the gospel. We favor those that present the gospel and emphasize faith because as Laurie Evans said, they can get other books from the public library. Many of the authors mentioned write historical fiction, which is popular with our readers. Once we get a "secular" reader started on Christian fiction books, they rarely go back!
GuidePost has several fiction series of books that might be a good fit for your Library
My church has found it necessary to avoid "Women's Christian fiction" because of the focus on romance--even if not too sexual in nature. Adults can find women's fiction to meet their needs outside of the church library. I focus on non-fiction and Christian living. And I also make sure there are adequate choices in the junior and teen sections of literature with a Christian message, because the public school may not carry tha.
Every church library is unique. In our Enrichment Center collection we have the romance genre because our readers can trust what we have to not have any sexual content nor unacceptable story lines. We intentionally use Christian romance authors who write stories that illustrate Bible based romance in dating and marriage. Those include Davis Bunn, Amanda Cabot, Melody Carlson, Jennifer Chiaverini, Mary Connealy, Robin Jones Gunn, Dee Henderson, Karen Kingsbury, plus others. We also catalog many romance novels in the Inspirational genre because the word "romance" does not appeal to all our readers. In that genre we have Erin Bartels, Jeff High, Richard Paul Evans, Chris Fabry, Denise Hildreth, Jan Karon, Catherine Marshall (Christy and Julie), Francine Rivers, Lisa Wingate, My personal new favorite romance author in the Inspiration genre is Katherine Reay. Just a few suggestions, but keep in mind every church famiy is unique. And yes, we have readers who read our new purchases before we process them.
None of her books are explicite. Most of the Biblical Fiction writers keep it clean. Brock and Brodie Thoene (pronounced Taynee) are Jewish they write several Christian fiction. I have "A. D. Chronicles" in my private and library collection. They are very historically accurate, so contain some violence from the time period. The books depict the Life of Jesus before the crucifiction. Three of the books deal with Christ's birth, 6, 7, and 8. Mesu Andrews and Tess Afshar are some other good ones.