How Our Series Interrelate

 

The Yada Yada Prayer Group series …

The Yada Yada Prayer Group started it all! But Neta quickly learned you can’t put 12 feisty women in a novel and expect them to stay there. Like a drawer full of colorful mismatched socks, the Yada Yadas (Hebrew word found in Scripture, meaning “to know and be known intimately”) multiplied into a seven-book series that has readers laughing, crying, and experiencing life and faith from this amazing cross-cultural mix. The series has sold over 700,000 copies.

 

The House of Hope series …

This 4-book series picks up on the Manna House Homeless Shelter where some of the Yada Yada sisters volunteer. We meet Gabby Fairbanks, a wealthy wife and mother from a penthouse on Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive, who runs into an old bag lady, takes her to the shelter … and her life begins to turn inside out. She not only gets a job at the shelter but ends up in the shelter herself when her dysfunctional marriage crashes and burns. But as Gabby learns, God’s not finished with her yet.

 

The Harry Bentley series …

Wait! Dave said there’s more going on with some of the secondary characters in the HOH series than meets the eye—like Harry Bentley, the affable doorman in the Fairbanks’ luxury high-rise. And thus began something new—two “parallel novels” to the House of Hope series, happening in the same time frame, overlapping some of the scenes and characters, while telling Harry’s own story. If you haven’t read the HOH or Harry Bentley series yet, here’s the best order to read: Where Do I Go? (HOH #1); Harry Bentley’s Second Chance; Who Do I Talk To? (HOH #2); Who Do I Lean On? (HOH #3); Harry Bentley’s Second Sight; and Who Is My Shelter? (HOH #4).

 

Lucy Come Home …

But readers still begged to know, what happened to crotchety ol’ Lucy the Bag Lady at the end of the House of Hope series? This stand-alone novel tells “Lucy’s story” from the time she was a teenager moving from place to place with her migrant farm family during the war years, and how she ended up on the streets of Chicago. The chapters move back and forth between past and present, connecting the dots that gradually reveal Lucy’s journey of hope.

 

SouledOut Sisters series …

This two-book series takes readers back to SouledOut Community Church as Avis Douglass—the mature and dignified leader of the Yada Yada prayer group—is having a crisis of faith. Differences with her new husband on life direction and the painful disappearance of her daughter and grandson are only complicated by the annoying Kat Davies and her crew of white, suburban college students at SouledOut who insinuate themselves into Avis’s life, like it or not. Mostly not. But sometimes—as both Avis and Kat discover—the person you most need is the one least like you. And in Book 2, after taking in a homeless mom and her kid, Kat wonders if her good deed was a bad idea when a romantic triangle complicates all the relationships at SouledOut.

 

Windy City Neighbors series

Behind every city skyline there are neighborhoods, people, relationships, and stories—which is the heart of our newest series, “Windy City Neighbors.” Each novel in this five-book series of “parallel novels” will highlight a different household in the Beecham Street neighborhood on Chicago’s north side, each family living their separate lives, mostly unknown and uncaring—until a near tragedy and a set of new neighbors (though Harry and Estelle Bentley are not new to fans of our previous series!) begin to thaw the separation. As lives and stories overlap and affect each other—even though each novel stands alone—the Beecham Street neighbors become a real neighborhood in Chicago’s ultimate test: “Snowmageddon.”

 

Two Great Stand-Alones …

Forty to Life is a Chicago story based on a true incident of profound forgiveness. It took place in the Rogers Park neighorhood, which many of you will recognize from our Yada Yada-related serises. Don't miss this urban life suspense.
Flying Blind is a romantic suspense set in the jungles of Colombia, South America, where a missionary pilot risks everything to rescue the kidnapped nurse with whom he has fallen in love. Both Nick and Terri are from Chicago, which just makes the story that much more real.