Christian Fiction as a category is a relative newcomer
in book review sources. It is an umbrella phrase which includes books that had
previously been considered contemporary fiction, historical fiction, suspense,
romance, westerns and science fiction. “Gentle
Reads” had been the previous description – no horrible violence, no descriptive
sex, clearly defined good/bad characters, and mildly suspenseful.
Looking for a current definition, I went to the
website of The Christy Awards (www.ChristyAwards.com). This award is named for Catherine Marshall,
author of many books including Christy and
A Man Called Peter. You may remember Christy as a tv series in the mid-90s. I remember A Man Called Peter, the biography of Peter Marshall, Chaplain of
the United States Senate, as the first book that made me cry. The Christy Awards website offers the following working
definition:
Christian fiction is a category of stories written by
novelists whose Christian worldview is woven into the fabric of the plot and
character development. Although this definition might seem either simplistic
on the one hand or overly broad on the other, this grouping of novels is as
comprehensive and as varied in age, interest,and spiritual depth as its readership ….
A subject search of BHPL’s
catalog returns almost 850 entries for Christian Fiction. Of course, this also contains audio and
e-book versions as separate entries. Since
this is still a new search term, the majority of books were written after 2000.
You might be interested in
trying the following popular authors:
Suzanne Woods Fischer
Shelley Shepard Gray
Karen Kingsbury
Beverly Lewis
Cindy Woodsmall
Kristin Billerbeck
Posted by S. Bakos
Related websites for further reading:
Other blog posts tagged 'Christian Fiction' review titles in this genre.
Website for the Christy Awards
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