EVERYDAY GRACES
Stories of Faith in the Ordinary
When was the last time you noticed grace?
It might have been in the neighbor who asks to borrow something they don’t need just so you can feel needed. In the police officer who trades a ticket for a Sunday promise. In the grandmother who opens her door to a wrong number and finds family anyway.
Everyday Graces is a collection of fifteen moments where the divine breaks through the mundane. A teenage boy learns what it means to serve while helping his grandfather with compression socks. A security guard wrestles with temptation over a Coke and discovers that empty hands sometimes fill themselves. A father realizes his daughter’s heartbreak matters more than her test scores.
These aren’t stories about miracles in the traditional sense. They’re about the miracle of paying attention. Of recognizing that grace doesn’t always announce itself with thunder. Sometimes it whispers through a text message, a shared pizza, or a mislaid watch that leads you back to the relationship that matters most.
Drawing from his own experiences and the lives of those around him, award-winning author C.E. Albanese crafts narratives that feel like memory—specific enough to be real, universal enough to be yours. Whether you’re wrestling with faith or simply hungry for stories that remind you why human connection matters, these pages offer something rare: the comfort of knowing you’re not alone in noticing the sacred tucked inside the everyday.
Grace is always near. You just have to learn to see it.
PERFECT FOR:
- Book clubs seeking meaningful discussion
- Lenten reading and reflection
- Gifts for anyone navigating faith, loss, or simply being human
- Readers who believe stories can be prayers
- Anyone who’s ever wondered if they’re paying enough attention
FROM THE AUTHOR:
These stories were born from moments when I witnessed grace break through the everyday. Sometimes in my own life, sometimes in the lives around me. A stranger’s kindness. A family’s quiet strength. A child’s innocent prayer. Grace often arrives like that: unexpected, undeserved, but perfectly timed.
My prayer is that you, dear reader, find here a glimmer of hope. A reminder that grace is always near, waiting to touch your soul as it has mine.”
C.E. Albanese
Everyday Saints
Stories of Quiet Courage
Where Ordinary People Say Yes to Love One Faithful Moment at a Time
Not all saints wear halos. Some wear aprons, drive buses, answer crisis hotlines, and sign divorce papers with trembling hands. Everyday Saints reveals the quiet heroism hidden in plain sight—ten stories of ordinary people who discover that holiness isn’t about perfection, but about showing up when it matters most.
Sainthood for the Rest of Us
A woman holds a candle over unsigned divorce papers while her husband fights addiction in rehab—for the third time.
A mail carrier finds an elderly widow trapped beneath a bookcase, her faint cries the only sign she’s still alive.
A teenage boy, angry at the world that took his father, discovers that grief and hope can coexist in the pages of The Odyssey.
These aren’t stories of the distant past or the extraordinarily devout. They’re stories of right now. Of people like you. Like me. Like the neighbor who shares what little she has, the teacher who refuses to give up on a troubled student, the priest who misses the World Series to sit with a dying stranger.
Drawing on the wisdom of saints like Rita of Cascia, John Bosco, Thérèse of Lisieux, and Martin of Tours, these ten interconnected tales explore what St. Thérèse called “the little way”—finding God not in grand gestures, but in simple faithfulness.
Because sainthood isn’t a destination. It’s a way of traveling.
And the path is open to anyone willing to walk it with an open heart.
PERFECT FOR:
- Book clubs seeking meaningful discussion
- Readers of Anthony Doerr, Marilynne Robinson, and Ron Hansen
- Anyone walking through grief, loss, or transition
- Catholics and seekers exploring what faith looks like in real life
- Gifts for confirmations, RCIA, or anyone needing hope
FROM THE AUTHOR
In the past, if you’d asked me if I wanted to be a saint, I would have said sainthood was reserved for those who perform grand gestures—miracles, even—people with a connection to the holy that seemed unattainable for ordinary, broken people like me.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Sainthood isn’t about earthly validation or even titles. It’s about offering help to those who need it and accepting help when it’s offered to us. It’s about loving not only when it feels right and good, but especially when it seems impossible or undeserved.
Maybe that’s the most profound truth about sainthood: we’re all called to it. The question isn’t whether we’re worthy—none of us are. The question is whether we’re willing.”
C.E. Albanese
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Meet The Author
C.E Albanese
C.E. Albanese is an award-winning author and former U.S. Secret Service special agent. Winner of the Clive Cussler Adventure Writers Competition Grandmaster Award, his fiction has appeared in magazines and anthologies. His work spans multiple genres, drawing from his faith and law enforcement background to explore authentic human experiences.