Bridge to a Distant Star
June 29, 2011
This week, the Christian Fiction Blog Alliance is introducing
David C. Cook; New edition (June 1, 2011) by Carolyn Williford
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Carolyn Williford has authored seven books, including Jordan’s Bend, Devotions for Families That Can’t Sit Still, and Faith Tango, as well as numerous articles. She and her husband, Craig, live in Deerfield, Illinois, where he serves as president of Trinity International University. They have two children and four grandchildren.
ABOUT THE BOOK
It All Comes Tumbling Down
As a storm rages in the night, unwary drivers venture onto Tampa Bay’s most renowned bridge. No one sees the danger ahead. No one notices the jagged gap hidden by the darkness and rain. Yet when the bridge collapses vehicles careen into the churning waters of the bay below.
In that one catastrophic moment, three powerful stories converge: a family ravaged by their child’s heartbreaking news, a marriage threatened by its own facade, and a college student burdened by self doubt. As each story unfolds, the characters move steadily closer to that fateful moment on the bridge. And while each character searches for grace, the storms in their lives loom as large as the storm that awaits them above the bay.
When these characters intersect in Carolyn Williford’s gripping and moving volume of three novellas, they also collide with the transforming truth of Christ: Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me.
If you would like to read the first chapter of Bridge to a Distant Star, go HERE.
Sally Says: I chose to read this book because I guessed the author came up with the idea after the bridge collapse in Minneapolis. I was wrong — she was thinking of another disaster years ago.
The book begins with the accident that causes the collapse, but before we know what happens, we’re whisked back in time a few months, and we know someone we’re reading about will be on the bridge when it collapses.
As I read, I wondered how these people were going to survive, how their stories were all going to intersect once they hit that water. But the ending was nothing like I’d imagined, which was both good and bad.
If you’re looking for something different than the usual novel, this may be the one for you. There are three completely separate stories in the book, all connected because of people in the story being on the bridge. While there were some writing techniques that distracted me a bit, I kept reading because I had to know what happened to these poor people. Having the three short stories in the book made it easy reading, easy to pick up from right where I’d last put it down.
She Makes It Look Easy
June 24, 2011
This week,
the Christian Fiction Blog Alliance is introducing
David C. Cook (June 1, 2011)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Marybeth Whalen is the wife of Curt and mom of six children. The family lives outside Charlotte, NC. Marybeth is a member of the Proverbs 31 Ministries writing team and a regular contributor to their daily devotions. Her first novel,The Mailbox was released in June 2010. Her next novel, She Makes It Look Easy, will be released in June 2011. Additionally, she serves as director of She Reads, Proverbs 31 Ministries’ fiction division.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Ariel Baxter has just moved into the neighborhood of her dreams. The chaos of domestic life and the loneliness of motherhood, however, moved with her. Then she meets her neighbor, Justine Miller. Justine ushers Ariel into a world of clutter-free houses, fresh-baked bread, homemade crafts, neighborhood play dates, and organization techniques designed to make marriage better and parenting manageable.
Soon Ariel realizes there is hope for peace, friendship, and clean kitchen counters. But when rumors start to circulate about Justine’s real home life, Ariel must choose whether to believe the best about the friend she admires or consider the possibility that “perfection” isn’t always what it seems to be.
If you would like to read an excerpt of She Makes It Look Easy, go HERE.
Sally Says: She Makes It Look Easy is women’s fiction at its best. If this is characteristic of Whalen’s writing, then sign me up! I’m a fan.
What woman hasn’t looked at another who seemed to have everything together and wondered how she did it, who tried to copy her? This book addresses that, giving us a peek into that perfect world and reminding us that things aren’t always what they appear.
She Makes It Look Easy is a fast-paced enjoyable read, perfect for summer. I’m going back to get Whalen’s first book and eagerly watching for her next one.
Going Back in Time to Pompeii
June 17, 2011
The Christian Fiction Blog Alliance is introducing
B&H Books (June 1, 2011) by T.L. Higley
Sally Says: T.L. Higley does ancient historical fiction well, and she doesn’t disappoint in her latest book Pompeii: City on Fire.
There are a number of unique elements in Pompeii — a female gladiator, a Roman politician with a moral heart, and a deeper look into life in Roman times. The characters were fun people to spend time with, easy to root for, and throughout the plot, I kept waiting for Vesuvius to erupt which lent a great ticking clock element to the story.
One thing Higley did very well was capture the dark, twisted morality of the times without being graphic. I knew the main character had fled horrible circumstances, but I never knew the details. When they did come out, it was very subtle without making the reader live through it but just enough where I found myself angry with the villain and feeling terrible for the character.
I hope you’ll pick up Pompeii and enjoy it as much as I did. Whether you like contemporary or historical fiction, I think you’ll find Pompeii a great way to spend a few relaxing hours.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
A fiction aficionado since grade school, T.L. Higley, author of Pompeii: City on Fire (B&H Publishing House, June 2011) started her first novel at the age of eight.
Now the author of nine historical fiction novels, including the popular Seven Wonders series, Higley isn’t just transporting readers: She’s transporting herself, too.
“My Iifelong interest in history and mythology has taken me to Italy, Greece, Egypt, Rome, Turkey, Jordan and Israel, where I’ve gotten to study those ancient cultures in rich detail,” says Higley. “It’s my desire to shine the light of the gospel into the cultures of the past, and I figure what better way to do that than to visit the cultures themselves?”
In addition to her accomplished novelist career, Higley is a business entrepreneur and a mother. In fact, for Pompeii, she brought her daughter along with her to Italy for the research trip.
“We gave it to her as a graduation present, not only because Italy is terrific, but because I believe in exposing children to global cultures,” says Higley, who became a student herself again this year. She’s now a graduate student at American Public University, earning her master’s degree in Ancient and Classical Studies.
When Higley isn’t traveling on research trips, writing her novels, or studying for class, she operates four online retail companies, including KoolStuff4Kids.com – a family-run business that began as a way for her oldest daughter to make some extra money for camp. Today, it is a go-to site for parents, children and teachers all over the country, looking for beads and other kid-friendly craft supplies.
Higley lives with her husband and her three other children (aforementioned daughter now in college) just outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Pompeii, a city that’s many things to many people. For Cato, it’s the perfect escape from a failed political career in Rome. A place to start again, become a winemaker. But when a corrupt politician wrongfully jails Cato’s sister, he must oust the man from power to save her.
For Ariella, Pompeii is a means to an end. As a young Jew, she escaped the fall of Jerusalem only to endure slavery to a cruel Roman general. She ends up in Pompeii, disguised as a young man and sold into a gladiator troupe. Her anger fuels her to fight well, hoping to win the arena crowds and reveal her gender at the perfect time. Perhaps then she will win true freedom.
But evil creeps through the streets of Pompeii. Political corruption, religious persecution, and family peril threaten to destroy Ariella and Cato, who are thrown together in the battle to survive. As Vesuvius churns with deadly intent, the two must bridge their differences to save the lives of those they love, before the fiery ash buries Pompeii, leaving the city lost to the world.
Watch the book trailer:
If you would like to read the Prologue of Pompeii, go HERE.
The Sweetest Thing . . . A Must-Read Book
June 14, 2011
This week, the Christian Fiction Blog Alliance is introducing
Bethany House (June 1, 2011) by Elizabeth Musser
Sally Says: The Sweetest Thing is the best book I’ve read in the past two years. Easily.
The book is set in Atlanta in the midst of the Great Depression, set in the wealthy neighborhoods that still live like the Depression never happened. The main characters, Perri and Dobbs, are teenagers, yet I found them easy to relate to and root for. My favorite character was Dobbs. I grew up in a similar way as she did, just not quite so bad. And so I totally related to her idealistic views of serving God and the struggle she had when faced with all her family was giving up.
Whatever type of Christian fiction you enjoy, I’m sure you’ll love The Sweetest Thing. The writing sets the stage so beautifully, and nothing in the story is wasted. Technically the book is character-driven, but at the halfway point I felt like the book should be almost done because so much had happened. So the plot is very strong as well.
As a writer, this is a book I’ll be rereading and studying. It’s a beautiful work of art that was a pleasure to read. I look forward to Elizabeth’s next book and hope she returns to historical Georgia which worked so well in her first book The Swan House and here again in The Sweetest Thing.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Elizabeth Musser, an Atlanta native, studied English and French literature at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. While at Vanderbilt, I had the opportunity to spend a semester in Aix-en-Provence,
France. During her Senior year at Vanderbilt, she attended a five-day missions conference for students and discovered an amazing thing: God had missionaries in France, and she felt God calling her there. After graduation, she spent eight months training for the mission field in Chicago, Illinois and then two years serving in a tiny Protestant church in Eastern France where she met her future husband.
Elizabeth lives in southern France with her husband and their two sons. She find her work as a mother, wife, author and missionary filled with challenges and chances to see God’s hand at work daily in her life. Inspiration for her novels come both from her experiences growing up in Atlanta as well as through the people she meets in her work in France. Many conversations within her novels are inspired from real-life conversations with skeptics and seekers alike.
Her acclaimed novel, The Swan House, was a Book Sense bestseller list in the Southeast and was selected as one of the top Christian books for 2001 by Amazon’s editors. Searching for Eternity is her sixth novel.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Compelling Southern Novel Explores Atlanta Society in the 1930s.
The Singleton family’s fortunes seem unaffected by the Great Depression, and Perri—along with the other girls at Atlanta’s elite Washington Seminary—lives a life of tea dances with college boys and matinees at the cinema. When tragedy strikes, Perri is confronted with a world far different from the one she has always known.
At the insistence of her parents, Mary ‘Dobbs’ Dillard, the daughter of an itinerant preacher, is sent from inner-city Chicago to live with her aunt and attend Washington Seminary. Dobbs, passionate, fiercely individualistic and deeply religious, enters Washington Seminary as a bull in a china shop and shocks the girls with her frank talk about poverty and her stories of revival on the road. Her arrival intersects at the point of Perri’s ultimate crisis, and the tragedy forges an unlikely friendship.
The Sweetest Thing tells the story of two remarkable young women—opposites in every way—fighting for the same goal: surviving tumultuous change. Just as the Great Depression collides disastrously with Perri’s well-ordered life, friendship blossoms–a friendship that will be tested by jealousy, betrayal, and family secrets…
If you would like to read the first chapter of The Sweetest Thing, go HERE.
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