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The Charles Martin Collection: When Crickets Cry, Chasing Fireflies, and Wrapped in Rain
Unavailable
The Charles Martin Collection: When Crickets Cry, Chasing Fireflies, and Wrapped in Rain
Unavailable
The Charles Martin Collection: When Crickets Cry, Chasing Fireflies, and Wrapped in Rain
Ebook1,490 pages22 hours

The Charles Martin Collection: When Crickets Cry, Chasing Fireflies, and Wrapped in Rain

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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About this ebook

Three powerful novels about identity, belonging, and unconditional love from New York Times bestselling author Charles Martin are now available in one e-book collection.

When Crickets Cry

It begins in a sleepy Southern town. A spirited seven-year-old has a brisk business at her lemonade stand. But her pretty yellow dress can’t quite hide the ugly scar on her chest. Her latest customer understands more about the scar than he wants to admit. And the beat-up bread truck careening around the corner is about to change the trajectory of both their lives. A man with a painful past. A child with a doubtful future. And a shared journey toward healing for both their hearts.

Chasing Fireflies

They have one summer to find what was lost long ago.

“Never settle for less than the truth,” she told him. But when you don't even know your real name, the truth gets a little complicated. It can nestle so close to home it's hard to see. It can even flourish inside a lie. And as Chase Walker would discover, learning the truth about who you are can be as elusive—and as magical—as chasing fireflies on a summer night.

Wrapped in Rain

Famous photographer Tucker Mason captures things other people don’t see. But what Tucker himself can’t see is how to let go of the past.

Tucker and his younger brother, Mutt, were raised by their housekeeper, Miss Ella Rain, who loved the motherless boys like her own. Hiring her was the only good thing their father ever did.

But when Mutt escapes from a mental hospital, Tucker is forced to return home and face the agony of that tragic past.

Though Miss Ella has long since passed, Tucker can still hear her voice—and her prayers. But finding peace and starting anew will take a measure of grace that Tucker scarcely believes in.

Martin’s characters overflow with rich truisms that you’ll reread or rewind and relisten. Look for additional inspirational fiction from Charles Martin:

  • The Record Keeper
  • Long Way Gone
  • The Mountain Between Us
LanguageEnglish
PublisherThomas Nelson
Release dateMar 15, 2016
ISBN9780718082604
Unavailable
The Charles Martin Collection: When Crickets Cry, Chasing Fireflies, and Wrapped in Rain
Author

Charles Martin

Charles Martin is a New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author. He and his wife, Christy, live in Jacksonville, Florida. Learn more at charlesmartinbooks.com; Instagram: @storiedcareer; Twitter: @storiedcareer; Facebook: @Author.Charles.Martin.

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Reviews for The Charles Martin Collection

Rating: 4.164473599561403 out of 5 stars
4/5

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  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    In order to add drama to the story the main character who was a heart surgeon left his extremely ill wife alone for 20 hours a day, everyday, while he was being a very important physician. What??? And we the reader are supposed to feel sorry for this "great" guy for all he has gone through.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Good story, a bit religious but heartwarming story.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I highly recommend this 5-star read of a book! It's a love story. No, I don't mean of the romance genre, though there's romance in it. It's a LOVE story -- with a lot of heart, literally, and on many other subtler but profound levels. It's a book, that in one story, paints a picture using the palette of the human condition -- of our ability to love, to alienate, to forgive, to punish (ourselves or others), to hope, to be frustrated, to have closure, and to begin anew. It's a story that will move you to tears or make you choke up, because something in you *will* resonate with the story, associating with one or more of the characters in the book. If you feel nothing (I don't mean that you share the same sentiments as I do for the story), if this story does not touch you in some way, read it again, for you really need a change of heart.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    When Crickets Cry by Charles Martin; (5*)I love inspirational books but I do not being preached at. When I began this book I expected it to be a good story but I got much more than I bargained for.This book is one of the finer pieces of fiction I have read this year. It was so compellingly and beautifully written that I found it difficult to put down. This one will tug at your heart strings and make you look a little deeper into yourself; look at your life a bit differently. Perhaps make you count your blessings a bit more. I know I have.The story is about Reese, a man with trying to get away from his past. And it is about a little girl who needs a new heart. Reece meets her as she is selling lemonade at a street stand to earn money to help pay for her new heart. The people of the community know her and her story and are good to come and buy her lemonade. They become friends. It starts out so innocent and sweetly that you are taken for a ride along through this southern community and and before you realize it you are so deep into the story that you want to remain immersed in it.Reese lost his wife tragically and hasn't been able to find his way back to life's mainstream. His budding relationship with this little girl helps him to find his way out of the darkness in which he has been living and reminds him that life does continue on ever so sweetly and tartly just like a lemonade.When Crickets Cry is a beautiful testimony to one man's return to the faith that things can again be good and beautiful. I am happy to have found another author to read and recommend.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    "Another powerful story you cannot put down. (loved the Atlanta/Lake Burton setting), since lived in Vinings, spending weekends at Lake Lanier...and holidays at Lake Burton! Have read all his books and looking forward to his new release-Unwritten. You will want his the entire collection of his work to pass along to your children!" Charles is one of my favorite authors and everything he writes is a winner!"
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    By far my favorite Charles Martin book, but I love all of his books. This one has suspense, mystery, love and it sets my heart at peace that prayers are answered, sometimes in the biggest way possible, sometimes in the smallest.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I like this book of love, life, mistakes and a big dose of God. I didn't realize it was Christian fiction until I got to the library and found it under "I" for inspirational. It was not down-your-throat, but the theme of Christianity was unmistakable. While the plot was predictable, the characters were well-developed and the writing drew me in. By the end, there were tears in my eyes, and an honest surprise at the end.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The thing about literary fiction, Christian or otherwise, is you have to love the language. To be done right, an author needs to value things like sentence structure, placement of words, and economy of prose. In WHEN CRICKETS CRY, Charles Martin gets two out of three right. His sentence structure is perfect. He manages to build scenes so startlingly real that you can remember them as if they're your own memories. His word placement is brilliant. You can tell he's honed this story down to the most beautiful couplings of words that then copulate and birth vivid visuals. But he's far from sparse. I'm a firm believer that the fewer words used to describe something the better the end result. Especially in literary fiction. Now, this might seem the exact opposite of what most people think of when considering literary fiction (most believing that the genre, by definition, is verbose) but I disagree. I think wordy authors only prove their lack of skill. If it takes you four sentences to describe someone throwing a door open, you've failed at your task. Here, and only here, does Martin fail. Charles Martin likes listing stuff. He wants you to know every single detail down to the brand of every appliance/tool/toiletry used by his characters. Although, sometimes, the brand is all he tells you and you have to guess at what the fuck he's talking about (yes, even though this is a review of Christian fiction, I still dropped the f-bomb, because Hey-Zeus died for my right to be offensive!). The book is bogged down by paragraphs that resemble brick walls slathered with text which have no purpose other than reciting the Sears catalog's chapter on boat-building hardware, or the most boring bits of the New England Journal of Medicine. The author didn't bother with any flair or fireworks during these sections, which led me to believe he might have been copying directly from GRAY'S ANATOMY or BLACK & DECKER DO DALLAS. The prose farted along or was completely none-existent during every list, was basically stripped down to the most commonplace verbiage. Boo! Hiss! *tosses tomatoes at author* This is only so glaringly obvious because the rest of the book is gorgeous. Seriously, I wanted to have this book's babies.

    What Martin does best is scene building. He stacks the beginning of every chapter with enough detail so that the hops back and forth in time are not jarring or confusing. Then he lets his characters exist in that space. The dialogue is some of the best I've ever read. These people talk like real people. They react like real people. They love and hurt and breathe and walk like real people. If it wasn't for that, I probably would have deleted this book from my Kindle. Which brings me to...

    The fact that I'm an atheist. I'm not even agnostic. I firmly and unflinchingly believe that there is no creator, no invisible man in the sky who grants wishes, and sends people to a lake of fire for not listening to him like some amateur parental figure. Honestly, to me, God and Santa are made of the same thing: fairy dust and children's wishes. That alone should speak volumes as to the quality of this book. Charles Martin makes it very clear, from the first page on, that this book is about the power of God and blah, blah, blah, other religious stuff and things. But, even though I believe in Martin's god as much as I believe in Tolkien's hobbits, I enjoyed this book for the journey, much like I did while reading THE LORD OF THE RINGS. Martin didn't make my belief a necessity, and for that, I applaud him.

    SPOILERS OF WAR! (SPOILERS AHEAD)

    The ending was... meh. This is personal preference over something that the author did wrong. I do believe that, had Annie died and Reese been able to get back on the horse, so to speak, even though he couldn't save her, the story would have benefited far more. If anything would have proven the strength of the author's faith, that would have. In my eyes, having him save Annie was far too convenient and easy an ending. This is why I don't like happy endings. There's no risk involved, and, for the most part, everyone expects them. In the end, Reese seemed weak because he had to save Annie to redeem himself instead of focusing on his faith to bounce back.

    THE END OF SPOILERS!

    In summation, this book didn't convert me to Christianity, nor did it try, and I commend Martin for that. He celebrated his faith without being preachy. The author can get long winded where product listings are concerned, but this book is mostly smexy (smart and sexy) prose that makes one want to lick the pages. I kid, I kid... but, seriously, schnozzberries. If you can stomach religiously devout characters and happy endings, read this book for the journey, not the destination.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Women's Fiction, similar to Nicholas Sparks.Reese hides out in small town Georgia, living on the lake next door to his late wife's brother Charlie. As the story unfolds, there's back and forth between Reese's younger years, including meeting his wife in school and later marrying her. It's very late in the story until we know what really happened in the kitchen that led to her death - as well as finding out why Charlie is blind. Annie is a youngster in Reese's town with a heart condition. Reese becomes the chauffer for her and her aunt, never letting on that he's a Pediatric Heart surgeon, until his mentor takes him aside and Annie wants to hunt for the "miracle man". Charlie's antics are hilarious - he "drives" the Jet ski or rows a boat with Reese as his eyes. "Termite" is a teen that they look out for as a brother, who becomes part of the story. In the end, of course everything turns out right.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I really like this author.
    Outstanding character development and good storytelling.
    Like the others I have read by this author the ending is usually predictable but because the writing is so good, it doesn’t matter. How the characters get to the end is where the power of the writing really shines.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is my first Charles Martin book but it definitely won't be my last! I have already purchased several of his other books and look forward to reading them as well. There's a 7 year old little girl with a lemonade stand doing a very brisk business. She has a large scar on her chest that her sundress can't hide. There's a stranger who recognizes the scar but turns away. When a run away bread truck comes careening around the corner, both of their lives change completely. An incredible story!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Absolutely beautiful writing, beautiful story. Reese (Dr. Jonathon Mitchell) is hiding away in GA, when he rescues a 7 year old girl, Annie, who has been hit by a truck. He discovers that she is awaiting a heart transplant, and lives with her guardian, Aunt Cindy, since her parents were killed. Annie has the same heart disease that Reese's wife, Emma, had. Emma and Reese were childhood best friends who grew up and were married. Emma's condition made Reese want to be a heart surgeon, but when he couldn't save Emma, he abandoned his calling. Emma's brother, Charlie, begs Reese to return to his work, read Emma's letters that she wrote to be opened after her death, and to open his heart again. The story is full of love and heart. I highly recommend it.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A heart transplant surgeon goes off the grid for 5 years when his wife dies. Good story. Learned a little if the transplant procedure.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    In order for me to review this book fairly I first need address the elephant in the room, namely religion. The author is without question a deeply committed Christian and his beliefs are evident in almost every paragraph in his book. Having grown up in a church-going family I have no problem with Christianity. If Mr. Martin is secure in his beliefs and confident of what lies in store beyond the grave, more power to him. The book he has written is what many call Christian fiction. I choose to call it religious fantasy. I use the word fantasy with no derogatory connotations intended. The author has written a story of the world as he wants it to be; a world without villains; a world where good people always do and say the right thing and bad people sooner or later come around and see the error of their ways. In my experience, such a world can only be found if you turn right at Hogwarts and head straight on till morning. In other words, it’s an imaginary world. If his purpose in writing it is to proselytize, then he really needs to tell a story that is set in a world the reader will accept as real. The plot is about as transparent as a plot can be. Two people with broken hearts, one physically and the other spiritually will, by the grace of god, heal each other. I am not revealing any spoilers that any reader wouldn’t have already figured out had they read the first chapter. The characters are nice, but so incredibly sweet that it’s a wonder they don’t all have diabetes. I also have a problem with the idea that a cardio-thoracic surgeon would believe that the heart is the physical center of our emotions. I know that this idea plays into the theme mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph but it also adds to the sense of unreality and makes it difficult to take the story seriously.I am not saying the author is a bad writer. He’s actually pretty good at stringing words together. When he talks about rowing, I’m reminded of some of the prose from Norman MacLean’s ‘A River Runs Through it’. His description of his wife’s death and his subsequent grieving are really quite moving. In addition, his description of the medical procedures used by cardio-thoracic surgeons in heart transplantation procedures is quite accurate. Bottom line: I read this book as part of a group read even though it is not the type of book that I would choose for myself. If you are someone who does enjoy Christian fiction then feel free to add two stars to my review to balance out my review. I believe the author can write but that he made his job far more difficult by the genre that he chose. As with most fantasies, it is difficult to drum up suspense when the reader knows that the preordained ending can be changed in an instant with the judicious use of magic and/or miracles.This review is based on an unabridged audio recording read by Adam Verner. He did an excellent job of narrating the story although somebody needs to tell him that Robinson Crusoe’s last name is not pronounced ’KUH-roo-sew’ . FYI: On a 5-point scale I assign stars based on my assessment of what the book needs in the way of improvements :•5 Stars – Nothing at all. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.•4 Stars – It could stand for a few tweaks here and there but it’s pretty good as it is.•3 Stars – A solid C grade. Some serious rewriting would be needed in order for this book to be considered good or memorable.•2 Stars – This book needs a lot of work. A good start would be to change the plot, the character development, the writing style and the ending. •1 Star - The only thing that would improve this book is a good bonfire.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Jonny has spent his whole life on a mission. He is one of those rare people who knows his purpose on this earth from a very young age. He was born to fix hearts, or more precisely, Emma's heart.From the third grade, every moment of his life has been leading up to one thing, healing Emma. So when things go awry, when he can't save Emma, guilt consumes him. He leaves his avocation and goes into hiding.But God isn't done with Jonny. This is a story of his gradual reawakening, his redemption, and hope. The characters are so real you are left wondering what they're doing now. You cheer for them, cry with them, and hope with them. The human spirit is a miracle of God, and Charles Martin knows.Read it.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is a book that once you start you can hardly put it down. I have now read every book by Charles Martin and haven't been disappointed in any of them. He is a remarkable author, able to keep your attention and I look forward to his next one. I would put him right up there with Nicholas Sparks!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    First inspirational book that I read. Wasn't really heavy on the Christian stuff but I cried like twice. Author did a good job of keeping the suspense and mystery of the characters. Simply a good book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    An encounter with a girl at a lemonade stand starts the main character, Reese, on a journey out of his self-imposed isolation. Reese was once more than a man who likes to restore boats and pal around with his brother-in-law. And the secret to who he once was may be just what Annie--who has a terminal illness--needs.This is a heart-felt story, if you are prone to cry be sure to have plenty of kleenex on hand as you read it. Out of tragedy comes hope and a chance for redepmtion and a brighter future. This is a good story to savor and the characters will stick in your memory for a long time.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Beautifully written story.