Every successful fiction writer knows the secret to keeping readers turning the pages is to increase the stakes. “Get your hero up a tree,” the old adage goes, “and then throw rocks at him.” Sophomore novelist W. Dale Cramer is an expert at throwing rocks.

Jeremy Prine, the 17-year-old protagonist of Bad Ground, has the wind kicked out of him early in life. His father is killed in a mining accident when the boy is only 10. When his mother dies of an undefined illness that eats up the family’s meager savings with hospital bills, the teenager finds himself with all his belongings in a duffel bag, $63 in cash and a cryptic letter from his dead mother encouraging him to find his uncle Aiden.

Obeying his mother’s last wish, Jeremy hits the road, thumbing his way from the hills of Tennessee to the hardscrabble territory of hard-rock miners in South Georgia. In a series of unfortunate encounters, he manages to lose what few possessions he has left before he finally finds his uncle at the Sweetbriar Creek Water Pollution Control Plant. Uncle Aiden, aka “Snake,” is a wily, bad-tempered, hard-rock veteran. Badly burned in the same accident that claimed Jeremy’s father, Snake is both physically and emotionally scarred. His world is the “hole,” and when he is not in it, he is holed up in his apartment seeking absolution in a bottle. Jeremy is just as emotionally stunted, having been shielded from life by an overprotective mother after his father’s death. The man and the boy make an uneasy peace as they both struggle toward reconciliation with their pasts, and their futures.

The lush landscape of South Georgia jars against the harsh beauty of the subterranean world of the hard-rock miners with satisfying clarity, and Cramer makes masterful use of both dialogue and description to get across his message of love, forgiveness and brotherhood in this intriguing coming-of-age novel.

After four years of retirement, Father Tim still hasn’t come up with a good answer to the inevitable question, “So what are you doing these days?” He volunteers, chews the fat with the regulars at the Main Street Grill, jogs with his dog Barnabas, tries to keep his diabetes in check and watches his wife Cynthia go into her studio to create award-winning children’s books. But Father Tim feels like he’s not doing nearly enough.

Then, just when he finds a new commitment, he allows his blood sugar to get out of hand, with catastrophic results. Soon he doubts his ability to do anything.

In This Mountain, Jan Karon’s seventh novel in the Mitford series, makes some hard observations about aging. Yet, at the same time she assures readers that through the grace of God, there is always reason for optimism.

When Father Tim, almost 69, finds himself in a deep depression, all of Mitford struggles to bring him out of it. To the author’s credit, she is honest about how hard that can be. Of course, long-time fans of this North Carolina series will know that through some combination of prayer, love and possibly medication Father Tim will smile again.

The suspense that propels the book comes from smaller questions. Will Father Tim ever go online? Will his adopted son Dooley find his siblings? Will Mitford accept ex-convicts who have paid their debt to society? Will the bookstore manager find true love? This meandering novel begins with the unlikely exclamation “Moles again!” and moves through familiar territory a place that feels like the hometown few of us ever had. Karon excels at generating folksiness, love and genuine caring among her eccentric characters as she allows them to age and grow.

Some characters seem overdone, however. Consider the pool player known as Pink, who introduces his friend thus: “This here’s Skin Head Bug Eye Snaggle Tooth Austin, you can call im Bug f’r short.” More true to life, and to the book, is Uncle Billy who punctuates his conversation with “don’t you know?” and searches for jokes to make Father Tim laugh.

Plenty happens in the closing pages of the book, pointing to a sequel. Jan Karon is not finished with Mitford yet. Anne Morris writes from Austin, Texas.

Best known for his nonfiction bestseller The God Chasers, Tommy Tenney has combined forces with writer Mark Andrew Olson to create his first novel, Hadassah: One Night with the King. Tenney develops the Old Testament tale of Queen Esther into an action-packed historical novel about how this remarkable young Jewish woman became the wife of the king of Persia and foiled a plot to kill her people. This intergenerational novel will transport the reader from the present to the past and back again. Author and editor W. Terry Whalin has always loved a good story.

In the opening pages of Sharon Baldacci’s A Sundog Moment, Elizabeth Whittaker is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Suddenly her seemingly perfect life is thrown into turmoil. As she struggles with the disease, Elizabeth joins a support group and learns to find the sundog moments in life moments “filled with clarity and truth.” But the chronic pain of MS leads Elizabeth into a life-changing decision when she is arrested for trying to obtain illegal drugs. This carefully crafted first novel from Baldacci, sister of best-selling novelist David Baldacci, draws from her 21 years of living with MS. Author and editor W. Terry Whalin has always loved a good story.

In Ted Dekker’s latest novel, Black, Thomas Hunter is running away from attackers in Denver when a bullet clips him and his world goes black. He wakes up in another world with a green forest and meets a beautiful woman, Rachelle. In this other world, Hunter learns things he could not possibly know such as the creation of the Raison virus by an evil industrialist who plans to use it to dominate world leaders. Each time Hunter sleeps, he moves between the two worlds, and becomes increasingly uncertain about which one is real. With a story reminiscent of The Matrix or The Lord of the Rings, Black will amaze readers as unexpected connections between the worlds are revealed. Expected to be a hit in both the Christian and secular markets, Black is the first part of a trilogy the next entries, Red and White, will be published later this year. Author and editor W. Terry Whalin has always loved a good story.

With a four million print run, the 12th installment of Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins’ Left Behind series, Glorious Appearing: The End of Days is the biggest event in Christian publishing this year. At the end of Book 11, two central characters in the series, writer Cameron “Buck” Williams and former 747 pilot Rayford Steele, were each in dire straits. Williams was last seen defending the Old City Wall in Jerusalem and Steele was on assignment at Petra. Glorious Appearing moves quickly to the return of Jesus Christ and the long-awaited confrontation between the evil Nicolae Jetty Carpathia and the Christians. Author and editor W. Terry Whalin has always loved a good story.

Karen Kingsbury continues her immensely popular Red Glove series with Hannah’s Hope. Teenager Hannah Roberts is shocked to discover that the powerful politician she’s always called Dad is not her biological father. She convinces her mother to help her search for her real father, a military pilot who they discover was presumed killed in Baghdad. But Hannah refuses to accept this news, and writes a letter that garners national attention and just might lead her to her roots. Fast-paced and infused with grace, Kingsbury’s latest is another affecting tale. Best of all, the series is a call to service Kingsbury concludes each book with an inspiring letter that encourages readers to get involved with community improvement projects with themes tied to the book. Now that’s holiday spirit. Amy Scribner is celebrating the holidays with her family in Olympia, Washington.

After their own son died in a Christmas Eve car accident, Patricia and Mark Addison couldn’t bring themselves to acknowledge the holiday. Years later, they’re barely on speaking terms, passing each other like ghosts in the hallway of their own home. When Patricia, a social worker, is assigned to the case of a five-year-old whose mother has died a few days before Christmas, she at first shies away from a case that too closely parallels her own grief. But she doesn’t have the heart to place young Emily in a foster home so close to the holidays, so Patricia brings her home for what she intends to be just a few days. What happens next is close to a holiday miracle. In author Donna Van Liere’s capable hands, The Christmas Hope is a magical story of second chances that will stay with readers long after the ornaments have been put away.

Amy Scribner is celebrating the holidays with her family in Olympia, Washington.

It is easy to fantasize about a time before life got so complicated, the simpler days when you weren’t constantly bombarded by depressing news from the television, the crushing debt required to keep up with the Joneses and the impending threat of war and terrorist attacks. But what if you were forced to live it? Terri Blackstock’s latest thriller, Last Light, postulates what might happen if an unexplained atmospheric disturbance suddenly knocked out all power, worldwide. No electricity. No telecommunications. No computers. It is a brave new world, where everything is reduced to animal instinct, human cunning and divine intervention. Last Light is a thought-provoking thriller that will have you second-guessing your own ability to survive in a world without modern conveniences. Mike Parker is a former pastor who writes from Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

The transition from blueblood to redneck may be devastating to the strongest man or woman. But when you are a 15-year-old debutante, there are only two options sink or swim. When DeVeaux DeLoach is faced with giving up Junior Cotillion, St. Mary’s Boarding School in Richmond and the family’s imposing Rose Hill Plantation home, she attempts to embrace her new reality rather than dwell on what might have been. Writing from the viewpoint of a girl on the verge of womanhood, Beth Webb Hart captures the heart and soul of the low country, just outside of Charleston’s genteel view in Grace at Low Tide. Hart refuses to sidestep the myriad landmines of adolescence, from peer pressure, emerging sexuality, drug and alcohol abuse and the strains of a family in transition. She has created characters that are full-bodied and resonant, and the story moves crisply, interrupted only when she pauses to quote scripture too perfectly.

Mike Parker is a former pastor who writes from Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

When famine, civil war, racial hatred, ethnic cleansing, the slave trade and religious intolerance combine forces as the backdrop for romance and redemption, you know you’ve got the makings of a page-turner. In the compelling When the Lion Roars, author DiAnn Mills uses the complex and under-reported Sudanese Civil War as a foil for the character journeys of three mule-headed revolutionaries a doctor from the American Midwest, an Arab Christian convert from the Sudanese royal family and a Southern Sudanese army colonel with independence on his mind. These three have little in common, other than a connection to the colonel’s 16-year-old sister, Rachel. When she is kidnapped, they must overcome their mistrust and prejudice and learn to depend on each other if they want to see Rachel alive again. Mike Parker is a former pastor who writes from Murfreesboro, Tennessee.