Books with author P. J. O'Brien

Learn how Christmas is celebrated around the world by coloring 30 pictures, among them vignettes of young carolers in Great Britain, Mexican children playing under a piñata, a Swedish girl wearing a traditional crown of candles, Greek children parading with drums and triangles, and an Australian family picnicking on a beach.There are also scenes of youngsters decorating a "tree of light" in China, French children leaving shoes for Père Nöel to fill, Americans hanging stockings on the mantle and leaving Santa milk and cookies, Polish children looking at the North Star, and 21 other illustrations. Each scene appears with an informative caption.

Will and Nora have a wonderful relationship, but lately there’s never enough time for just the two of them. Will decides he needs a change, and sets out to convince Nora that buying an old mansion in Michigan and running it as a bed and breakfast is the best thing for their marriage. Even though it’s a long way from Ohio, Nora finally gives in and decides to go along with Will’s crazy idea.Soon she falls in love with the mansion and can’t imagine living anywhere else, but life along the lakeshore isn’t all that she had thought it would be. Even though she is settling in and making friends, Nora is assaulted with challenges she never dreamed she would have to face. And Will’s old friend Chase is one of them. His unsettling stare unnerves her, and she begins to wonder if he has a hidden agenda.Nora is curious about the portraits of the original owners from the 1850s, which are hanging on the walls. The hair stands up on her arms whenever she passes one of them. Something is going on in this house, and Nora needs to find out what. She reaches out to a guest at the inn to help her discover the secrets of the past, which may resolve the problems of the present.

Tidy categories may suit the media, but people are more complex up close.News outlets, historians, and sociologists can (and do) tell us all about the statistics, but they don’t (and can’t) tell us about what it’s really like in a given place—how the squish of creek water between your toes or the crunch of autumn leaves on a city sidewalk shape your sense of normal and good and right. To understand that—to understand the people in the places—we need stories. We need to listen, get to know the nuance of people, and have empathy for their way of seeing things. Brandon O’Brien is, in many ways, a man torn between places. Raised in the rural South, educated in the suburbs, and now living and doing ministry in Manhattan, he’s seen these places, and their complexity, up close. With the knack of a natural storyteller, he shares what he learned about himself, faith, and the people who make up America on his own journey through it.

Tidy categories may suit the media, but people are more complex up close.News outlets, historians, and sociologists can (and do) tell us all about the statistics, but they don’t (and can’t) tell us about what it’s really like in a given place—how the squish of creek water between your toes or the crunch of autumn leaves on a city sidewalk shape your sense of normal and good and right. To understand that—to understand the people in the places—we need stories. We need to listen, get to know the nuance of people, and have empathy for their way of seeing things. Brandon O’Brien is, in many ways, a man torn between places. Raised in the rural South, educated in the suburbs, and now living and doing ministry in Manhattan, he’s seen these places, and their complexity, up close. With the knack of a natural storyteller, he shares what he learned about himself, faith, and the people who make up America on his own journey through it.

The Princess and the Pea is a story of a Princess who seeks shelter from a storm at a kingdom unknown to her. The Queen wanted proof that she was a real Princess. The Queen devised a plan to do just that. The moral of the story is resist the temptation to jump to conclusions without all the facts. This book is a modern adaptation of the earlier work of Hans Christian Anderson, The Princess and the Pea.

Santa Claus tells one of his elves about Jesus Christ. He tells her that Christmas is not about Santa or presents; it is about the day that God gave us the savior of the world. This book takes many of the symbols of Christmas and shows how they are related to Jesus. This is exactly the way it should be. For we need more of Him, and we need less of me. Earthly gifts break, and they cannot long please us. For true lasting joy, we all need Jesus.