Looking for a simple summer reading program for yourself or your teen? Catholic Teen Books has you covered. Read a book in each of three broad genre categories to get a bingo, then enter to win! (See the bingo card below.)
Choose from among the nearly 100 books listed at CatholicTeenBooks.com. Categories can be found under the menu tab “Books,” so you can easily see which categories a title might fulfill.
After recovering from their daring exploits in the exciting first book, The Ghosts of Westthorpe Academy, high school best friends Joe Pryce and Pete Figueroa return for another thrilling, action-adventure in Miracle at the Mission.
When one of them wins a St. Junipero Serra essay writing contest and is rewarded with a summer trip to California, they both embark on an adventure they will never forget. While visiting one of the historic Spanish missions founded by Father Serra, the boys meet a holy but mysterious old Franciscan monk who warns them of the dangers they would soon encounter.
It isn’t long before the boys are drawn into a series of events filled with suspense, intrigue, a high-speed car chase along the precipitous Pacific Coast Highway, and the schemes of foreign operatives seeking to bring harm to the President of the United States.
Caught up in the pursuit of the bad guys, the boys discover they have become suspects in the investigation by the FBI. Desperate to prove their innocence, they must rely on the guidance and wisdom of the old padre, who just happens to bear a strange resemblance to St. Junipero Serra himself.
With the world teetering on the brink of an international crisis, the story reaches its climax at another mission––Mission San Carlos Borromeo in Carmel––where the boys and a large gathering of people witness an incredible miracle that changes their lives forever.
One of my “things” is to be an advocate for Catholic fiction!
What is Catholic fiction? Well, we could have a scholarly discussion on the topic, but for our purposes here, let’s say it’s fiction written with a Catholic worldview.
To help bring some of the fantastic Catholic fiction out there to the forefront, I’m hosting an IG challenge in February that will allow us to share our favorites and not-yet favorites that have caught our eye so that more and more readers (including me!) can discover them.
If you’re on Instagram, please join in the #CatholicFictionChallenge beginning February 1, 2020. Join us for one day, every day, or somewhere in between.
This is an opportunity to promote your favorite Catholic novels, picture books, chapter books, audiobooks, etc. I’ve done my best to incorporate a variety of genres, themes, and formats. Use the challenge to promote your own books as well!
Let’s share and bring attention to Catholic fiction and discover some books we may not have heard of as well. You can find my post to comment and share in your Instagram stories at @CMAstfalk. Post link here.
You can pop in a day or two here and there as inspiration strikes or time allows. Whether you post one day or twenty-nine days, I hope you’ll watch my stories and follow the hashtag #CatholicFictionChallenge so that you can discover some great books for you and your family and friends to read and share.
(And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s a handy explanation of an Instagram challenge: “An Instagram challenge is a set photo theme that’s hosted by an account or brand. They provide an overall theme, daily prompts for inspiration, and have a hashtag for everyone to use.”)
THANKS FOR STOPPING BY! STAY A WHILE AND LOOK AROUND. LEAVE A COMMENT. SHARE WITH A FRIEND. IF YOU LIKE WHAT YOU SEE, PLEASE SIGN UP FOR MY AUTHOR NEWSLETTER TO KEEP UP-TO-DATE ON NEW RELEASES, EXTRAS, AND HOT DEALS!
A Single Bead really drives home the power of prayer in such a compelling way, one that is entertaining and organic to the story and gives us that big-picture glimpse of what many of us know intellectually about the efficacy of prayer but rarely recognize in daily life. Did you know from the start how that theme would permeate the book or did it develop as you wrote?
To really answer that question, I have to share the story of how I came to write A Single Bead in the first place. Having consecrated myself to Jesus through Mary in early October of 2013, I found myself feeling renewed conviction to write a Bible study on the Rosary. By mid-October, I was researching publishers and came across Pauline Books & Media, who said they were specifically seeking Catholic young adult fiction. That single sentence set bells ringing in my head, as if the Holy Spirit were saying, Stephanie, pay attention to this! I had never even considered writing fiction, though, so I said out loud, “God, if you want me to write Catholic young adult fiction, you’re going to have to give me the idea. Because I’ve got nothing!”
A blinding flash … then darkness. Bria Ford and her three closest friends are stranded on a country highway in the middle of a November night. No phones. No cars. No lights. Helpless and hundreds of miles from home, Bria and her friends put their lives in the hands of the handsome Jonah Page and his flinty sister, East, strangers who somehow know the secrets of Bria’s past. Secrets that not even she knows, but that offer them all the hope of survival.
The Light is Book One in this fast-paced, character-driven, Christian series that will leave you wondering who would I become if the world fell away?
Your historical novel Playing by Heartis based on the real lives of the talented and accomplished Agnesi sisters from 18th-century Milan. How did you first learn of them, and what inspired you to make them the subject of your novel?
I came to know about the Agnesi sisters in a rather roundabout way. Even though I have a B.S. in Math and Computer Science, I’d never heard of mathematician Maria Gaetana Agnesi until I came across her name in an article about forgotten women of history. I was appalled that there’d been no mention of her in any of my math classes or textbooks. Continue reading →
I’m impressed with your imagination more than that of any author I follow. What do you do to feed that imagination, to create such original characters and stories?
This is a bit of a hard one, because I don’t particularly feel like I do anything special.I read (though less than I used to due to time, and I’m getting much pickier), I also like films, though again, I’m getting much pickier. I don’t really watch TV at all. I probably get maybe a third to half my book ideas in dreams, so those I cannot take even the illusion of credit for! The other ideas are split between the ones that come very rapidly to the ones that grow more slowly, but they all develop without any interference from me, at least until I reach the stage of serious plotting, so I think all the credit lies with the Holy Spirit for these as well! Continue reading →
