Rob Bell’s extraordinary and provocative Drops Like Stars, published as part of the Rob Bell Classics relaunch, explores the relationship between suffering and creativity, and the transformative power of pain.

‘Few readers will dispute Bell's gentle assertions: that life can be extremely difficult and capricious, that it is often difficult to find God amid suffering, that suffering has a great potential to unify disparate people, and that great bursts of creative energy can arise from pain. Bell explores these issues not by covert biblical exegesis … but [by] new-fashioned storytelling. Bell weaves inspiring stories of people who turned their suffering into something transformative.’ (Publishers Weekly) ‘Bell fights every impulse in our culture to domesticate Jesus [and] challenges the reader to be open to surprise, mystery and all of the unanswerables… Bell has given theologically suspicious Christians new courage to bet their life on Jesus Christ.’ (Christian Century) ‘Claiming that some versions of Jesus should be rejected, particularly those used to intimidate and inspire fear or hatred, Bell persuasively interprets the Bible as a message of love and redemption. . . . His style is characteristically concise and oral, his tone passionate and unabashedly positive.’ (Publishers Weekly) ‘One of the nation’s rock-star-popular young pastors, Rob Bell, has stuck a pitchfork in how Christians talk about damnation.’ (USA Today) ‘It isn’t easy to develop a biblical imagination that takes in the comprehensive and eternal work of Christ . . . Rob Bell goes a long way in helping us acquire just such an imagination–without a trace of soft sentimentality and without compromising an inch of evangelical conviction.’ (Eugene H. Peterson, Professor Emeritus of Spiritual Theology, Regent College, and author of The Message and The Pastor

• Rob Bell is the leading Christian author in the UK over the past few years. His books and DVDs have sold over half a million copies in the UK, and 3 million worldwide. • Love Wins was the first Christian book to hit the Sunday Times Bestseller List since Karen Armstrong. • Drops Like Stars, as well as other Rob Bell classics, Velvet Elvis, Sex God, and Jesus Wants to Save Christians, have previously only been available in the UK through distribution and are now being relaunched by Collins with strong packaging and more accessible formats than ever before. • The previous edition of Velvet Elvis sold over 16,000 TCM in the UK. • Rob Bell is focusing more on touring, writing and speaking going forward – he’s leaving his parish church at Mars Hill to allow him to concentrate on communicating to bigger, broader audiences. • The New Yorker are putting together a profile on Rob Bell -which is impressive – they only ever do a select few. CNN have been following Rob around in the last weeks at Mars Hill.