Along with your sunscreen and towel there’s something else you must remember when hitting the beach this summer– a great book of course! Can’t decide what to stuff in your beach bag? We’re making it easy with our list of the top five Christian beach reads.

1. Looking for the Hottest Christian Fiction?   Mississippi Nights

Two brothers, one death–the bond of brotherhood faces its greatest challenge against resentment and guilt.

Can the love between two brothers eventually win against pain and guilt?

When Firefighter David Boyette’s fiancée perishes in a car fire, he blames his brother, Sgt. Jeremy Boyette, for her death. Three years later, David returns home with a dark and devastating secret. With the help of family, a woman’s love, and a small child’s devotion, can David overcome insurmountable odds as he and Jeremy face the bitterness that enslaves him? Together the brothers must decide if the bond of brotherhood is stronger than resentment and hate.

2. Love a Story About Skeletons in the Closet? Crossing Values

For years, Amber traipsed around the Northwest avoiding the skeletons in her closet. Job-hopping every few weeks, she refused to let anyone get close to her as she slowly made her way east. As winter plants itself firmly across the Rockies, she decides to take a chance on a job at a logging company with a family different from any she’s ever known before. Watching the family interact creates more questions than answers for Amber. Feeling like she’s entered the happily-ever-after written at the end of a fairytale, she watches for cracks in the facade. Surely as the days pass, the play-acting will cease and the real family will emerge. Or could she be wrong? Could they truly be genuine? Could Faye understand the trauma from her past or Peter think of her as more than just the winter office help? Could this family really hold the key to what she’s seeking?

3. Want to Know What Baseball Players Believe? God’s Lineup

God’s Lineup is a collection of testimonies from Major League baseball players and how Christ has impacted their lives on and off the field. There are trying times in the sport of baseball and among Christians. This book is a breath of fresh air for both baseball fans and Christians. It illustrates how all people, including the top baseball players, face trying times and how being saved has changed them and the way they play the game.

Each chapter focuses on one ball player and tells the story about how their life was before knowing Christ, how they came to know Him and how their life has changed.

4. Need to Get Lost in a Novel with Layers? The Painted Table

Saffee Quimbly has always sensed her “normal” Quimbly household was far from normal. A television? No need. Having friends over? A mistake not to be repeated. Unreasonable expectations and criticism? Painfully expected. And all part of “normal.” But her mother’s unpredictable spells of arguing with imaginary tormentors, a Norwegian heirloom table subjected to countless layers of paint during such fits, and her father’s refusal to seek help for his unstable wife—these too are “normal.” Saffee meets the wide-open world with these secrets stowed away, and she plans to keep things that way. Jack, a blind date gone right, helps Saffee gain victory over the past, and connect to spiritual moorings.

5. Want to be Wowed by an Impossibly True Missionary Tale? Reckless Abandon

David Sitton was barely a man when he left surfing and partying to live in Papua New Guinea, a faraway, perilous land. Leaving Texas with a Bible, a suitcase (and a surfboard), he took the gospel into cannibalistic areas to people who had never heard the name of Jesus. For thirty-four years God has used him to help train missionaries, spread the gospel and establish dozens of churches in remote regions. Through this book, experience the amazing things God did as David recklessly abandoned his will to the will of God.