Looking to curl up with a book while you have some down time this December? Need a gift idea for a reader in your life? We recommend these excellent books by writers who have been featured in the Revealer within the past year.

1) Is Hanukkah or Christmas on your mind? Did you enjoy Samira Mehta’s article about the “December dilemma”? Learn more about interfaith families in her book, Beyond Chrismukkah: The Christian-Jewish Interfaith Family in the United States (UNC Press, 2018).

2) Are memoirs about religion, families, and the complexities of love something you enjoy? Were you moved by Briallen Hopper’s beautiful prose in her article, “Learning to Write about Religion“? If so, you will definitely like her book, Hard to Love: Essays and Confessions (Bloomsbury, 2019). It is a 2019 Kirkus Best Book of the Year!

3) Speaking of great writing, are you looking for advice on how to become a published author? Susan Shapiro, whose captivating story on forgiveness ran in the September issue, has an exceptionally insightful book to help you navigate the publishing world: The Byline Bible: Get Published in 5 Weeks (Penguin Random House, 2018).

4) Are you a fan of Stephen Colbert? Are you curious about how Catholicism shaped his professional and personal life? We published an excerpt of Stephanie Brehm’s book in September and you’ll want to curl up with a full-length copy of America’s Most Famous Catholic: Stephen Colbert and American Religion in the Twenty-First Century (Fordham University Press, 2019).

5) Looking for a page-turner about kidnapping in the name of religion? We ran an excerpt in November from Kevin Lewis O’Neill’s fascinating book about ministers who kidnap addicts to help them overcome their addictions by saving their souls. Don’t miss Hunted: Predation and Pentecostalism in Guatemala (University of Chicago Press, 2019).

6) Are you curious about how religion shaped LGBTQ politics in the United States? We featured a great conversation between Kali Handelman, then-Editor of the Revealer, and Brett Krutzsch, current Editor of the Revealer, in our Summer issue about Krutzsch’s new book, Dying to Be Normal: Gay Martyrs and the Transformation of American Sexual Politics (Oxford University Press, 2019).

7) Speaking of politics, are you interested in learning about the complexities of religious freedom in America and abroad? Jolyon Thomas wrote about how the United States has weaponized religious freedom overseas in our April issue. Discover more in his book, Faking Liberties: Religious Freedom in American-Occupied Japan (University of Chicago Press, 2019).

8) Are you one of the many Revealer readers who has been moved by Liane Carlson’s powerful writing about forgiveness, failure, and facing the climate crisis? Read her new book, Contingency and the Limits of History: How Touch Shapes Experience and Meaning (Columbia University Press, 2019).

9) And last, but not least, did you enjoy learning about the popularity of Jewish Buddhists in this month’s issue? Don’t miss Emily Sigalow’s book, American JewBu: Jews, Buddhists, and Religious Change (Princeton University Press, 2019).

Happy reading!