Books like Beyond the darkness by Angie Fenimore

A small farming town faces murder, mistaken identity, and a lawsuit against a Christian school, while a young woman battles a looming demonic army and a growing spiritual war.

In the quiet farming town of Bacon's Corner, an attempted murder, mistaken identity, and a lawsuit against a struggling Christian school force Sally Beth Roe to confront danger and uncover hidden truths.

Baptist minister Don Piper survived a fatal truck collision that granted him a 90‑minute tour of heaven, where he meets former spiritual mentors and hears heavenly music. After a miraculous recovery, he shares this extraordinary experience with the world.

Dozens of books, articles, television shows, and films relating "near-death" experiences have appeared in the past decade. People who have survived a close brush with death reveal their extraordinary visions and ecstatic feelings at the moment they died, describing journeys through a tunnel to a realm of light, visual reviews of their past deeds, encounters with a benevolent spirit, and permanent transformation after returning to life. Carol Zaleski's Otherworld Journeys offers the most comprehensive treatment to date of the evidence surrounding near-death experiences. The first to place researchers' findings, first-person accounts, and possible medical or psychological explanations in historical perspective, she discusses how these materials reflect the influence of contemporary culture. She demonstrates that modern near-death reports belong to a vast family of otherworld journey tales, with examples in nearly every religious heritage. She identifies universal as well as culturally specific features by comparing near-death narratives in two distinct periods of Western society: medieval Christendom and twentieth-century secular America. This comparison reveals profound similarities, such as the life-review and the transforming after-effects of the vision, as well as striking contrasts, such as the absence of hell or punishment scenes from modern accounts. Mediating between the "debunkers" and the near-death researchers, Zaleski considers current efforts to explain near-death experience scientifically. She concludes by emphasizing the importance of the otherworld vision for understanding imaginative and religious experience in general.

"The seeds for the twelve interconnected crime stories in Darkness came from the pages of the Italian daily papers. In sparse prose that echoes the files of a police report, Dacia Maraini gives a resounding voice to the string of victims who receive only fleeting mention in the media each day. Among them is twelve-year-old Viollca, an Albanian sold into prostitution by her parents, who hope she will soon return with enough money to pay for her dowry and a new roof. And the boy Tano, who brings charges of physical abuse against his father. Two years and the death of his younger brother pass before anyone at the police station will believe him. Linking the collection together is Adele Sofia, a steel-nerved though tenderhearted police commissioner with a penchant for licorice at various points on the investigative trail, and whose job it is to hunt down those who prey on society's weakest and most vulnerable members. Told in a straight forward, unforgettably powerful and affecting manner in which the facts speak for themselves, Darkness illuminates the underbelly of Rome. With absorbing compassion and discretion Maraini creates a cast of characters who wake up each morning to a reality quite different from la dolce vita."--BOOK JACKET.