Sharing Too Much

Bestselling, popular author Richard Paul Evans delivers a collection of inspiring essays, sharing insights and sage advice culled from his life experiences. 

Richard Paul Evans is an author, father, and husband. In Sharing Too Much, he unpacks memorable personal stories and life lessons experienced over half a century. This broad-ranging collection of entertaining, concisely short essays offers thought-provoking insights and sage advice.

Over seven sections, Evans is incredibly open in sharing details about his life. He was a "lonely little boy" and "a poor kid from a large family" who suffered "years of teasing and torment" because of Tourette's syndrome, which was only diagnosed when he was 41 years old. Because his mother endured serious depression that manifested into suicidal tendencies, the family was forced to move from Arcadia, California to a rather dilapidated, inherited house in Salt Lake City, Utah. This move only exacerbated Evan's feelings of displacement. 

Evans mines the past and the foundations that led him to become a writer. Several essays probe his immensely popular first novel, The Christmas Box—how it was conceived via real-life experiences, the ingenious back-door path it traveled to publication, and how that novel paved the way for Evans’s extraordinary success. Other sections offer inventive moral-themed remembrances and fables, stories that delve into Evans’s enduring marriage, parenthood, the unexpected teachers of life, and even otherworldly, spiritual experiences.

 

Evans (A Christmas Memory) is a remarkably relentless optimist whose moving, hopeful--easy to absorb--essays will offer great appeal and inspiration to a wide-range of readers.

Sharing Too Much: Musings from an Unlikely Life by Richard Paul Evans

Gallery Books, $22.99 hardcover, 978198177461, 272 pages

Publishing Date: February 27, 2024

 
NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review as originally published on Shelf Awareness (March 8, 2024), link HERE 

 

Pony Confidential

In this madcap, comic mystery, an old pony sets out to find and exact revenge on his former owner, a woman extradited for a 25-year-old murder.

Christina Lynch departs from historical fiction themed on love and espionage (Sally Brady’s Italian Adventure, The Italian Party) and trots out an inventively clever comic mystery, Pony Confidential. 

 

A dual storyline threads the narrative that starts when Californian, Penny Marcus, an unassuming third-grade teacher, is arrested. Penny is charged for a murder committed 25-years before, when she was 12-years-old and living in New York. Stunned, Penny is considered a “wanted fugitive.” She’s separated from her estranged husband and mentally ill daughter and extradited to her old hometown.

 

Decades before, Penny’s sensitive, loyal riding pony--who accompanied her on the day of the murder--incurred a “primal wound” when he was sold. Cast adrift from home to home, the willful, mindful pony suffered from simmering resentment: “You make us believe we’re beloved family members (I’m looking at you, Penny!) and then you put a dollar sign on our heads and send us off with anyone who coughs up the cash.” Now aging, cynical, and fed up with his lot in life, the jaded pony escapes his current owner. He sets off on a cross-country adventure, enlisting the help of other whimsical, talking animals to find and exact revenge on Penny. En route, however, new details emerge into the cold case that put Penny behind bars.

 

Lynch wrangles up a searingly fun, imaginative story that shines with plausible, madcap plotting and keen, edgy observations about the nature of people and animal welfare.

Pony Confidential by Christina Lynch 

Berkley, $28.00 hardcover, 9780593640364, 384 pages

Publication Date: November 5, 2024

To order this book on INDIEBOUND/Bookshop.Org, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review as originally published on Shelf Awareness (November 29, 2024), link HERE 

Chicken Soup for the Soul: 101 Ways to Think Positive

Your attitude is a powerful tool for creating a happier life…and nowadays, couldn’t everyone benefit from a little more positive thinking? That’s why I encourage you to read the latest Chicken Soup for the Soul anthology that features 101 personal essays written by real people who have reacted to the ups and downs of life—and how employing a positive attitude helped them create a happier life.

I’m pleased to have an essay included in this anthology—a story that explores the power of finding silver linings…I hope by sharing my experience, others will be inspired to think more positively about their own lives.

 

Order a copy today!  Happy Reading! 

 

Chicken Soup for the Soul: 101 Ways to Think Positive – edited by Amy Newmark

Chicken Soup for the Soul, $16.99 paperback, 368 pages, 978-1611591071

Publication date January 7, 2025

 

To order this book on Amazon, link HERE

To order this book on Barnes & Noble, link HERE

To order this book on bookshop.org link HERE

To learn more about Chicken Soup for the Soul - books and other related media - link HERE