James Watkins is the author of sixteen books including Death & Beyond, which won a Campus Life "Book of the Year" award, and The Why Files series, which was honored with a Christian Retailer's Choice award. He serves as associate acquisitions editor at Wesleyan Publishing House and has won four Evangelical Press Association awards for editing. He is a graduate of Indiana Wesleyan University with a BA in Theology and his graduate work is in communications at Ball State University and Pursue University. He lives in central Indiana.

Thomas Kempis was a priest, monk, and writer who lived in obscurity in fourteenth-century Germany. His books have been bestselling resources changing lives for more than 500 years.