Richard Paul Evans

The latest book I have read by Richard Paul Evans was entitled "The Sunflower". Evans is known now for his Christmas books, but his first few books did not totally revolve around Christmas. They had a Christmas scene, mostly toward the end. This is one of those books. "The Sunflower" mostly takes place in Peru, South America. It is a wonderful love story about loss and hope. Christine was to be married but shortly before their wedding date, her fiance backs out, leaving her devistated. Christine's friend Jessica signs them up to go to Peru to help work with orphans. Christine is not thrilled with this idea, but she feels called to go. The other story centeres around Dr. Cook and his running away from his life as a doctor in the states. Obviously these two people meet at some point. Very nice story, I think one of my favorite of his.

"Noel" was actually the first book written by him that I read. This was a few years ago. I'll be honest, I was attracted to the shiny ball on the cover. I had never heard of Evans at this point. This story is about two strangers who change each other's lives. Mark's car dies on a snowy night and he goes into a coffee shop and meets Macy. Over the next few weeks, they tell each other their life stories. They become close and Mark wants to Mary Macy but she has baggage. I enjoyed this one, more of a Christmas feel.

"The Christmas Box" was Evan's first novel and it was self-publishedway back in 1994. A young couple are caring for a lonely widow. The widow on her deathbed reveals her secret sorrow through a Christmas box filled with letters. This particular book has a lot of Christian imagry throughout.

Then I went sort of left field and read "The 5 Lessons a Millionaire Taught Me". Not to be confused with his other book "The 5 Lessons a Millionaire Taught Me...For Women". The latter just came out earlier this year.

This is a very interesting non-fiction book about prosperity. In short it is a financial guide
lays out the five principles common to many self-made fortunes. Fascinating reading.

In "The Gift" Nathan Hurst, a frequently traveling, Tourette's-suffering security chief for a retail chain. (I lifted that sentence from Amazon, it is so good). He gets stranded (snowed in) at a Denver airport on Thanksgiving. He meetins Lizzy and Collin. Collin has leukemia but he also has a healing gift and cures Nathan of his Tourette's.

This book really pulled at the heart strings. I think this was my favorite out of all the Christmas books I've read so far.

Then along comes "Grace". This was the Christmas book for 2008. He comes out with one a year. This one was very depressing. Eric finds runaway classmate Grace living in a dumpster. He falls in love with her. Of course Eric's life isn't peachy, his dad is recovering from Guillain-Barré, which puts a lot of strees on his mother. The book went along just find until the end. I did not like this one as much as the others. This is a Christmas season book, it really should be more uplifting.

"Timepiece" was a book I did not read during the Christmas season. But it was an earlier work and didn't really revolve around the Christmas season, although it had the obligitory scene.

This story traces the miraculous lives of David and his wife MaryAnne as they discover the power of love, loyalty, forgiveness -- and a long-forgotten keepsake that will change the fate of their family for eternity (Amazon).
This is another one of my favorite one of his books by Evans. Such a touching and interesting story.