Number 1. Fabian Foley
Well, what do you think? I’m afraid I’m going to be totally biased here… because who else would I pick as my favourite author but my wife and fellow blogger, Fabian Foley?
As I write this page in the blog, Fabian is busy writing a sequel to her first book. She has written and published two so far: The Outing (a compelling and moving story about being gay in the 1980s) and The Man with the Butterfly Mind (an uplifting ensemble story about what happens when the only living soul who knows you are missing is your dog). Check out the details, and of course, I encourage you to read them…
I’ve also included some other books that we both found inspiring, interesting, fun, moving, and all those things we look for in a book. Click on any cover to learn more about each book and by all means come back and see what we are reading next.
Happy reading.
1 The Outing. I hadn’t planned on writing The Outing. I was teasing out the elements of another story when armed with my morning coffee, in March 2020, I opened my laptop and browsed the news headlines. A thirty-year-old suicide finding had been overturned. A new inquest found the death was murder. Something at the back of my mind remembered I had heard about this before, so I started Googling. As I read about Scott Johnson and his family, the trauma they had been through over thirty or more years, became an overwhelming reminder of my own fears for my son, growing up in Queensland when being gay was both criminal and vilified.
A few more clicks revealed more, and more, including George Duncan. I was in tears.
Later that day, sitting in our friend’s country house in Provence looking out over the olive grove, and the massif beyond and revisiting those fears, the idea of fictionalizing Scott and George’s stories wouldn’t let go of me.
Over the next few weeks, several possible storylines competed… a fictional memoir, a coming-of-age story, a crime novel, suspense… I didn’t quite know yet. But the main character, Robert Carson began taking shape in my mind. And I kept asking him, ‘What’s your story, Robert?’ ‘What happened to you?’
2. The Man With The Butterfly Mind.
What happens when the only living soul who knows you are missing is your dog? If you’ve ever wondered what a dog is thinking and feeling, then Bimba draws you into a charming and believable first-hand experience of her world.
Bimba’s happiness isn’t the only thing that’s in jeopardy when her owner disappears. And when she finds herself in the care of others, her gratitude is overshadowed. Even if she could make them understand, they are all preoccupied with their own sadness and struggles.
But, as seemingly unrelated events and unexpected kindness propel Bimba’s new friends into an orbit with her at its center, the universe gets to work. And as their lives overlap and converge, it’s clear that even when what we get isn’t what we thought we wanted, happiness is still there, waiting for us to catch on or catch up.
A story of loss and grieving and overcoming adversity. Quirky, with humour and emotion. As uplifting as it is captivating.
3. A Return to Love.
The mega-bestselling spiritual guide in which Marianne Williamson shares her reflections on A Course in Miracles and her insights on the application of love in the search for inner peace. Williamson reveals how we each can become a miracle worker by accepting God and by the expression of love in our daily lives. Whether psychic pain is in the area of relationships, career, or health, she shows us how love is a potent force, the key to inner peace, and how by practicing love we can make our own lives more fulfilling while creating a more peaceful and loving world for our children.
4. The Power of Now. Eckhart Tolle is emerging as one of today’s most inspiring teachers. In The Power of Now, a #1 national bestseller, the author describes his transition from despair to self-realization soon after his 29th birthday. Tolle took another ten years to understand this transformation, during which time he evolved a philosophy that has parallels in Buddhism, relaxation techniques, and meditation theory but is also eminently practical.
In The Power of Now he shows readers how to recognize themselves as the creators of their own pain, and how to have a pain-free existence by living fully in the present. Accessing the deepest self, the true self can be learned, he says, by freeing ourselves from the conflicting, unreasonable demands of the mind and living present, fully, and intensely, in the Now.
5. Love Is Letting go of Fear has guided millions of readers along the path of self-healing with its deeply powerful yet profoundly humble message. Embrace it with an open mind and a willing heart and let it guide you to a life in which negativity, doubt, and fear are replaced with optimism, joy, and love. For more than thirty years, Love Is Letting of Fear continues to be among the most widely read and best-loved classics on personal transformation.
After more than thirty years, Love Is Letting of Fear continues to be among the most widely read and best-loved classics on personal transformation. Both helpful and hopeful, this little gem of a guide offers twelve lessons to help us let go of the past and stay focused on the present as we step confidently toward the future.
6. The End of Death. We don’t trust God. We may think we do! But when we dare to look deeply into our own unconscious mind, we’ll be shocked to learn what we really believe about God–and thus, about Self and world. The End of Death – Volume One: The Development of Trust is a clear and uncompromising beacon that illuminates our current predicament, as well as the steps required in our journey home to God.
Included with this book: Powerful additional support in the form of diagrams, exercises, prayers, and guided audio meditations downloadable from the End of Death website.
Using A Course in Miracles as its treasure map, The End of Death carves a brilliantly clear and insightful path straight toward the treasure of Christed awareness. With startlingly lucid explanations, Nouk pares the Course’s true message down to its most powerful essence. And the many Course quotes she includes offer undeniable proof of the argument she makes: That Jesus asks every one of us to embody full Christed awareness — right here, right now, while still in a body — just as He did.
7. A New Earth. Are you ready to put aside ego and be awakened? now the world is filled with angry, raging egos. But there is a better way and in A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle provides the spiritual framework for all of us to move beyond ourselves in order to make this world a better, more evolved place to live. Shattering modern ideas of ego and entitlement, self and society, Tolle lifts the veil of fear that has hung over us during this new millennium and reveals a path to happiness and health that every reader can follow.
Illuminating, enlightening, and uplifting, A New Earth is a profoundly spiritual manifesto for a better way of life—and for building a better world.
8. Conversations with God. During the lowest point of his life, a man begins writing letters to God to vent his frustrations – and unexpectedly receives answers to his questions, written by his own hand**. The best selling spiritual classic that has now sold millions of copies worldwide.**
Neale Donald Walsch was experiencing the lowest point of his life – from a devastating fire to the collapse of his marriage – when he decided to write a letter to God to vent his frustrations.
What he did not expect was a response: as he finished his letter, he was moved to continue writing, and out came extraordinary answers to his questions. These answers – covering all aspects of human existence, from happiness to money, to faith – helped Walsch to change himself and his life for better, and the way he viewed other beings.
Walsch compiled all of these answers into a book, Conversations with God, which was an instant bestseller on publication in 1995, going straight into the New York Times bestseller list and remaining there for more than 130 weeks. Over twenty years later, it has sold millions of copies world-wide and has changed the lives of countless people all around the world with its profound answers about life, happiness, money, love and faith. Conversations with God is a modern spiritual classic that remains fresh and relevant in a world that needs its powerful messages about who we are and our place in it more than ever.
9. Quantum Healing. More than twenty-five years ago, Quantum Healing helped transform Deepak Chopra into a cultural phenomenon. Now Dr. Chopra, hailed by Time as “the poet-prophet of alternative medicine,” returns to this groundbreaking exploration of consciousness and the power of mindfulness, adding the latest scientific research as well as expanded thoughts on the connection between body and mind.
Inspired by the unexplained recovery of patients in his own practice who had been given just a few months to live, Dr. Chopra began his search for answers. After returning to his native India to explore humanity’s most ancient healing tradition, Ayurveda, he combined those insights with Western medicine, neuroscience, and physics. What he discovered—a “network of intelligence” in the human body with the potential to defeat cancer, heart disease, even aging itself—forms the basis of Quantum Healing. In this new edition, Dr. Chopra once again offers a fascinating intellectual journey and a deeply moving chronicle of hope and healing.
10. Radical Forgiveness. Could there be a divine purpose behind everything that happens? If you’re willing to embrace this possibility, every aspect of your life can change. This is the theory behind Radical Forgiveness, Colin Tipping’s revolutionary method for liberating your energy for the soul’s highest expression. In Radical Forgiveness , readers join Colin for step-by-step instruction in what begins as a healing process, and culminates in a paradigm-shifting path to awakening.
With this updated and revised edition, readers will discover: How to transform difficult emotions like anger, fear, and resentment into unconditional love, gratitude, and peace
The five essential stages of Radical Forgiveness, and how they help us transcend the victim archetype and embrace the inherent perfection of life The tools of Radical Forgiveness a series of quick, effective, and easy-to-use techniques and processes including “Fake It ‘Til You Make It,” “Collapsing the Story,” “Satori Breathwork,” and more “Radical Forgiveness is much more than the mere letting go of the past,” writes Colin. “It is the key to creating the life that we want and the world that we want.” With Radical Forgiveness , he puts that key in our hands.
