Urban St. Reads, Fall 2023

Embrace Books is a Muskegon nonprofit that offers a self-sustaining library of books and audiobooks, including children’s and adult fiction and nonfiction in a variety of genres completely free two times a month. Located within the All Shores Wesleyan Church building on 1050 West Southern Ave, Muskegon, Embrace Books is open for physical book pick-ups and donations on the second and fourth Saturday of each month, from 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. Visit their website at embracebooks.org for more information.

Founder Taleah Greve suggests the following books for a cozy winter read:

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The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan. The Wheel of Time turns and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth returns again. What was, what will be, and what is, may yet fall under the Shadow. 

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Beneath the Haunting Sea by Joanna Ruth Meyer. Sixteen-year-old Talia was born to a life of certainty and luxury, destined to become Empress of half the world. But when an ambitious rival seizes power, she and her mother are banished to a nowhere province on the far edge of the Northern Sea. 

It is here, in the drafty halls of the Ruen Dahr, that Talia discovers family secrets, a melancholy boy with a troubling vision of her future, and a relic that holds the power of an ancient Star, revealing long forgotten tales of the Goddess Rahn. The more dark truths that Talia unravels about the gods’ history—and her own—the more the waves call to her, and it’s her destiny to answer. 

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1984 by George Orwell. Step into the harrowing world of George Orwell’s “1984,” a prophetic and haunting vision of a totalitarian society where Big Brother watches your every move and individuality is crushed under the weight of oppressive surveillance. 

In this dystopian masterpiece, Orwell presents a chilling future where the Party controls every aspect of life, rewriting history and manipulating reality to maintain its iron grip on power.

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The Perelanda Series  by C. S. Lewis. Out of the Silent Planet is the first novel in C. S. Lewis’s classic science fiction trilogy. It tells the adventure of Dr. Ransom, a Cambridge academic, who is abducted and taken on a spaceship to the red planet of Malacandra, which he knows as Mars. Ransom discovers he has come from the “silent planet”—Earth—whose tragic story is known throughout the universe!

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Holy Scriptures: Tree of Life Translation. Published by the Messianic Jewish Family Bible Society in 2013, this translation of the Bible highlights the Jewish roots of the Christian faith and uses transliterated Hebrew terms with the goal of providing the reader a more accurate version. According to the publisher’s website, “Each book of the Bible was assigned to a specific scholar, specializing in their respective book, who began translating into contemporary English from the original manuscripts.” tlvbiblesociety.org

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Embrace Books 
1050 W Southern Ave, Muskegon, MI 49441
(Currently utilizing donated space within the All Shores Wesleyan Church)
(231) 981-8415
embracebooks.org