NBS recommends tales of spirits and the spiritual

Her Fearful Symmetry

By Audrey Niffenegger

P649

MANILA, Philippines - Audrey Niffeneger’s spectacularly compelling second novel opens with a letter that alters the fate of every character. Julia and Valentia Poole are semi-normal American 20-year-olds with seemingly little interest in college or finding jobs. Their attachment to one another is intense. One morning the mailman delivers a thick envelope to their house in the suburbs of Chicago. From a London solicitor, the enclosed letter informs Valentia and Julia that their English aunt Elspeth Noblin, whom they never knew, has died of cancer and left them her London apartment. There are two conditions to this inheritance: that they live in it for a year before they sell it and that their parents not enter it. Julia and Valentia are twins. So were the estranged Elspeth and Edie, their mother.

Author of one of the most beloved first novels in recent years, Niffenegger returns with an unnerving, unforgettable and enchanting ghost story, a novel about love and identity, secrets and sisterhood, and the tenacity of life — even after death.

(Laking National Exclusive! Present your Laking National card and get this book for only P519.25!)

Have A Little Faith

By Mitch Albom

P795

Albom takes his readers on a stirring, heartfelt mission to honor a last request and send a beloved rabbi off to heaven the way the cleric had done for so many before him. Along the way, Albom — who walked away from a deeply religious background as a young man — rekindles his own faith by sitting with and caring for the wise, funny, but slowly decaying man of the cloth. Together, they explore the things that pull us apart about faith, as well as the universal beliefs that pull us together: God, heaven, doubt, war, atheism, intermarriage, the “us” versus “them” of religion.

Meanwhile, as Albom crafts his cleric’s final sendoff, he accidentally engages with an inner-city pastor of a crumbling church, one that houses the homeless and collects no dues — as far from Albom’s religious upbringing as possible. Skeptical at first, Albom begins to admire the pastor and his impoverished congregation. And as his own beloved cleric slowly lets go, Albom discovers that a faithful heart comes in many forms and from many places.

(Laking National Exclusive! Present your Laking National card and get this book for only P636!)

You Were Born For This

By Bruce Wilkinson

P629

Anyone can do a good deed, but some good works can only happen by an act of God. Around the world these acts are called miracles — not that even religious people expect to see one any time soon. But what would happen if millions of ordinary people walked out each morning expecting God to deliver a miracle through them to a person in need? You Were Born for This starts with the dramatic premise that everyone at all times is in need of a miracle, and that God is ready to meet those needs supernaturally through ordinary people who are willing to learn the “protocol of heaven.” You Were Born for This will change how you see your world and show you what you can expect God to do through you to meet real needs. You will master seven simple tools of service, and come to say with confidence, “I want to deliver a supernatural gift from God to someone in need today — and I expect to!”

Hypnotizing Maria

By Richard Bach

P699

Flight instructor Jamie Forbes guides a woman to landing her plane safely after her husband loses consciousness, then flies on to his own destination unimpressed by his act… flight instructors guide students every day.

Only after she tells reporters that a stranger appeared in an airplane alongside hers and hypnotized her into landing, and after he meets his own guiding stranger does he solve the bigger mystery: how each of us creates, step by step, what seems to be the solid world around us.

The Last Song

By Nicholas Sparks

P625

Seventeen-year-old Veronica “Ronnie” Miller’s life was turned upside down when her parents divorced and her father moved to Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina. Three years later, she remains alienated from her parents, particularly her father… until her mother decided it would be in everyone’s best interest if she and her brothers spent the summer with him. Resentful and rebellious, Ronnie rejects her father’s attempts to reach out to her and threatens to return to New York before the summer’s end. But soon Ronnie meets Will, the last person she thought she’d ever be attracted to, and finds herself falling for him, opening herself up to the greatest happiness — and pain — that she has ever known.

An unforgettable story of love in all its myriad forms, The Last Song demonstrates, as only a Nicholas Sparks novel can, the many ways that love can break our hearts… and heal them.

Available at selected National Book Store branches.