I believe that reviewing for Inspirational authors is my calling and ministry. The desire of my heart is that my blog is a light and source of encouragement for both readers and authors.
It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old...or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book!
You never know when I might play a wild card on you!
***Special thanks to Tracy L. Higley for sending me a review copy.***
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Tracy L. Higley started her first novel at the age of eight and has been hooked on writing ever since. She has authored nine novels, including Garden of Madness and Isle of Shadows. Tracy is currently pursuing a graduate degree in Ancient History and has traveled through Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Italy, researching her novels and falling into adventures. See her travel journals and more at TracyHigley.com
SHORT BOOK DESCRIPTION:
On an island teetering at the brink of anarchy, Daria finds hope among people of The Way.
She escaped a past of danger and found respite in beautiful Ephesus, a trading center on the Aegean coast, serving as tutor to Lucas, the wealthy merchant who rescued her.
But the darkness she fled has caught up with her.
The high priests of Artemis once controlled the city, but a group of sorcerers are gaining power. And a strange group who call themselves followers of The Way further threaten the equilibrium. As Daria investigates Lucas’s exploits into the darker side of the city, her life is endangered, and she takes refuge in the strange group of believers. She’s drawn to Paul and his friends, even as she wrestles with their teachings.
When authorities imprison Lucas for a brutal crime, Daria wonders if even Paul’s God can save him. Then she uncovers a shocking secret that could change everything—Lucas’s fate, her position in his household, and the outcome of the tension between pagans and Christians. But only if she survives long enough to divulge what she knows.
“Meticulously-researched, spellbindingly written with luscious prose and compelling and complex characters.” —Tosca Lee, New York Times best-selling author of Havah: The Story of Eve
Product Details:
List Price: $15.99
Paperback: 416 pages
Publisher: Thomas Nelson (March 12, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1401686826
ISBN-13: 978-1401686826
AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:
Prologue
I am an old man, and I have seen too much.
Too much of this world to endure any more. Too much of the next to want to linger.
And though I have nearly drowned in the glorious visions of those last days, yet I know not when it shall come, nor how many years I must tread this barren earth before all is made new.
There is a Story, you see. And we are still in the midst of it, ever striving to play our roles, battling on for the freedom of hearts and souls and minds yet enslaved by darkness.
But I have seen a great light. Oh yes, I have seen it. Even now it is breaking through, as it did on that grassy hillside so many cool spring mornings ago, when Moses and Elijah walked among us and my Brother shone with the glory He had been given from the beginning and will rise up to claim again at the end.
You will wonder, perhaps, at my calling Him brother. And yet that is what He was to me. Brother and friend, before Savior, before Lord. In those days when we wandered the land, going up and down from the Holy City, we shared our hearts, our lives, our laughter. Oh, how we laughed, He and I! He had the irrepressible joy of one who sees beyond the brokenness, to the restoration of all.
I loved him. And He loved me.
But I speak of beginnings and of endings, and these are words that have no meaning, for the day of His birth was both the beginning of the Kingdom and the end of tyranny, and that magnificent Day yet to come—it is the end-which-is-a-beginning, and my eyes have seen such glory in that New Jerusalem, my very heart breaks to tell of it.
And yet they come, young and old, to this tiny home in Ephesus that is to be my last dwelling outside that New City, and they beg me to tell the Story again and again.
And I do.
I tell of seals and scrolls, of a dragon and a beast and a Lamb. Of music that makes you weep to hear it and streets that blind the mortal eye. Of a Rider on a White Horse with eyes of blazing fire, whose name is Faithful and True. It is a great Story, and greater still to hear the final consummation of it, for how often we forget that we are living it still.
But I have another tale to tell. A smaller story within the One True Story that began before the creation of this world and is echoed at its end, as all our stories are. It happens here, in this port city of Ephesus but many years ago, when the darkness lay even heavier than it now does upon the people, and their souls cried out for relief from anyone who could give it.
This smaller story does not begin here in Ephesus, however. It begins a day’s sail away, on the sun-kissed shores of the Isle of Rhodes, where the light first began to break upon one woman and one man, even as they walked in darkness . . .
Chapter 1
Rhodes, AD 57
In the glare of the island morning sun, the sea blazed diamond-bright and hard as crystal, erratic flashes spattering light across Daria’s swift departure from the house of her angry employer.
She carried all she owned in one oversized leather pouch, slung over her shoulder. The pouch was not heavy. A few worn tunics and robes, her precious copy of Thucydides. She clutched it to her side and put her other hand to the gold comb pinning the dark waves of her hair, her one remaining luxury.
The bitter and familiar taste of regret chased her from the whitewashed hillside estate, down into the squalid harbor district. Why had she not kept silent?
Along the docks hungry gulls shrieked over fishy finds and work-worn sailors traded shrill insults. The restless slap of the sea against the hulls of boats kept time with the anxious rhythm of her steps against the cracked gray stones of the quay.
She had run once, haunted and guilty to a fresh start in Rhodes. Could she do it again? Find a way to take care of herself, to survive?
“Mistress Daria!”
The voice at her back was young and demanding, the tenor of a girl accustomed to a world arranged to her liking. And yet still precious, still malleable.
“Mistress! Where are you going?”
Daria slowed, eyes closed against the pain, and inhaled. She turned on the sun-warmed dock with a heaviness that pulled at her limbs like a retreating tide.
Corinna’s breath came quick with exertion and the white linen of her morning robe clung to her body. The sweet girl must have run all the way.
“To the School of Adelphos, Corinna. I will seek a position there.”
Corinna closed the distance between them and caught Daria’s hand in her own. Her wide eyes and full lips bespoke innocence. “But you cannot! Surely, Father did not mean what he said—”
Daria squeezed the girl’s eager fingers. “It is time. Besides”—she tipped Corinna’s chin back—“you have learned your lessons so well, perhaps you no longer need the services of a tutor.”
Corinna pulled away, dark eyes flashing and voice raised. “You do not believe that, mistress. It is you who says there is always more to learn.”
They drew the attention of several young dockworkers hauling cargo from ship to shore. Daria stared them down until they turned away, then circled the girl’s shoulders, pulled her close, and put her lips to Corinna’s ear. “Yes, you must never stop learning, dear girl. But it must be someone else who teaches you—”
“But why? What did you say to anger Father so greatly?”
Only what she thought was right. What must be said. A few strong phrases meant to rescue Corinna from a future under the thumb of a husband who would surely abuse her.
Daria smiled, fighting the sadness welling in her chest, and continued her trudge along the dock toward the school. “I am afraid discretion is one of the things I have not yet learned, Corinna. Your father is a proud man. He will not brook a mere servant giving him direction in the running of his household.”
Corinna stopped abruptly at the water’s edge, her pretty face turned to a scowl. “You are no mere servant! You are the most learned tutor I have ever had!”
Daria laughed and looked over the sea as she walked, at the skiffs and sails tied to iron cleats along the stone, easy transportation to the massive barges that floated in the blue harbor, awaiting trade. Papyrus and wool from Egypt, green jade and aromatic spices from far eastern shores, nuts and fruits and oils from Arabia. Her eyes strayed beyond the ships, followed northward along the rocky Anatolian coast to cities unknown, riddles to be unraveled, secrets and knowledge to be unlocked. More to learn, always. And somewhere perhaps, the key to redeeming the past.
They approached and skirted the strange symbol of the isle of Rhodes, the toppled Helios that once stood so proud and aloof along the harbor and now lay humbled, its bronze shell speckled to an aged green, reflecting the impenetrable turquoise sky. The massive statue had lain at the quay for gulls to peck and children to climb for nearly three hundred years since the quake brought it down. Daria found it disturbing.
“May I still visit you at the school, Mistress Daria?”
She smiled. “One challenge at a time. First I must convince Adelphos that he should hire me.”
Corinna’s tiny sandals scurried to keep pace. “Why would he not?”
“It is not easy to be an educated woman in a man’s world of philosophy and rhetoric. There are few men who appreciate such a woman.”
“How could anyone not appreciate someone as good, as brave, as you?”
The child gave her too much credit. She was neither good, nor brave. She would not be here in Rhodes if she were. Though she was trying. The gods knew, she had been trying.
Corinna lifted her chin with a frown in the direction of the school. “I shall simply explain to Adelphos how very valuable you are.”
And how outspoken? Interfering? But perhaps the girl could help in some way.
“Will you demonstrate some of what I have taught you, Corinna?”
The girl’s eyes lit up. “Just wait, mistress. I shall amaze and delight that crusty old Adelphos.”
Daria studied the impetuous girl and bit her lip. But it was a chance she must take.
The School of Adelphos lay at the end of the docks, its modest door deceptive. Daria paused outside, her hand skimming the rough wood, and inhaled determination in the sharp tang of salt and fish on the breeze. Who would believe that such distinguished men as the poet Apollonius and Attalus the astronomer had studied and written and debated behind this door? Sea trade had kept Rhodes prosperous for centuries, but in the two hundred years under Roman control, the Greek island had grown only more beautiful, a stronghold of learning, of arts and sciences and philosophy.
Inside its most famous school, she blinked twice and waited for her sun-blind eyes to adjust.
“Daria!” Adelphos emerged from the shadows of the antechamber with a cool smile and tilt of his head. Tall and broad-shouldered, he was several years her senior, with the confident ease of an athlete, a man aware of his own attractiveness.
She returned the smile and straightened her back. “Adelphos. Looking well, I am pleased to see.”
He ran a gaze down the length of her, taking in her thin white tunic and the pale blue mantle that was the best of her lot. “As are you.”
“I have come to make you an offer.”
At this, his eyebrows and the corner of his mouth lifted in amusement and he gave a glance to Corinna, still at the door. “Shouldn’t we send your young charge home first?”
She ignored the innuendo. “My employ as Corinna’s tutor will soon come to an end, and I desire to find a place here, in your school. As a teacher.” She swallowed against the nervous clutch of her throat.
Again the lifted eyebrows, but Adelphos said nothing, only strolled into the lofty main hall of the school, a cavernous marble room already scattered with scholars and philosophers, hushed with the echoes of great minds.
She gritted her teeth against the condescension and beckoned Corinna to follow, with a warning glance to keep the girl quiet, but the child’s sudden intake of breath at the fluted columns and curvilinear architraves snapped unwanted attention in their direction, the frowns of men annoyed by disruptive women.
Adelphos disappeared into the alcove that housed the school’s precious stock of scrolls—scrolls Daria had often perused at her leisure and his generosity.
Daria spoke to his back. “Do you doubt my abilities—”
“What I doubt, my lady, is a rich man’s willingness to pay a woman to teach his sons.”
Daria waved a hand. “Bah! What difference does it make? I can do a man’s work just as well. And if they learn, they learn!” But a cold fear knotted in her belly.
Adelphos traced his fingertips over the countless nooks of scrolls, as if he could find the one he sought simply by touching its ragged edge. “And you, Daria? Do you want to live a man’s life as well as do a man’s work? What woman does not long for love and family and hearth?”
Her throat tightened at his words, too close to the secrets of her heart. Yes, she longed for those comforts. For a love that would accept her abilities, complement rather than suppress. But for now, for now she had no one and she must assure her own welfare.
She coughed to clear the dryness of her throat and stepped beside him, examined the great works of philosophy and literature, their tan Egyptian papyri wrapped in brown twine, sealed in waxy red.
Adelphos reached past her to a nook above her head, and his muscled arm brushed her shoulder.
The touch was intentional, clearly. Manipulative. Even so, his nearness left her breathless and her usual sharp-tongued wit failed. When she spoke, it was a harsh whisper, too raw with emotion, though the words emerged falsely casual. “And why should I not have both?”
At this, Adelphos huffed, a derisive little laugh, and turned to lean his back against the shelves and unroll the scroll he had retrieved.
“A woman of ambition. Does such a breed truly exist?” His gaze darted to hers. “But what am I saying? You have already wedded a husband, have you not?”
Daria pulled a scroll from its recess and pretended to study it.
“You are interested in the work of Pythagoras? That one is newly arrived from Samos.”
Daria shrugged. “I find his work repetitive. What new has he added to Euclid’s previous efforts?”
“Indeed.” Adelphos pulled the scroll from her hands and replaced it in its nook. “But you have not answered my question.”
“I am a widow, yes.”
“A widow with no sons. No dowry.” He glanced at Corinna, clutching the doorway. “And no employment. Is there anything more desperate?”
Daria lifted her chin and met his gaze. “It seems you are in an enviable position, then, Adelphos. You have found a skilled teacher, available for a bargain.”
Adelphos circled to Corinna, an appreciative gaze lingering on her youth and beauty. “And this is your prize specimen? The pupil of whom I have heard such wonders?”
The girl straightened and faced Adelphos with a confidence borne of knowledge. “Shall I demonstrate the superior skill Mistress Daria has given me with languages?”
Daria silently cheered and blessed the girl. “Corinna has been working hard to master the tongues of Rome’s far-flung empire.”
Adelphos’s brow creased and he opened his lips as if to speak, then sealed them and nodded once. No doubt he wanted to ask what use there might be for a girl who could speak anything but common Greek. As Daria herself was such a girl, the implicit question struck a nerve. She turned a shoulder to Adelphos and nodded encouragement to Corinna. “Let us hear Herodotus in the Classical first, then.”
The girl grinned, then gushed a passage of Herodotus in the proud language of her Greek forebears, the language of literature and poetry, before Alexander had rampaged the world and equalized them all with his common koine.
“And now in Latin, Corinna.”
The girl repeated the passage, this time in the tongue of the Romans, the new conquerors.
Adelphos tilted his head to study the girl, then spoke to her in Latin. “Anyone can memorize a famous passage in a foreign tongue. Few can converse in it.”
Corinna’s eyelashes fluttered and she glanced at her hands, twisted at her waist. When she answered, it was not in Latin, but in Persian. “Fewer still can converse in multiple languages at once, my lord.”
Adelphos chuckled, then glanced at Daria. “She does you proud, lady.”
A glow of pride, almost motherly, warmed Daria’s chest. “Indeed.”
Corinna reached out and gripped Adelphos’s arm, bare beneath his gleaming white tunic. “Oh, it is all Mistress Daria’s fine teaching, I assure you, my lord. I wish to be an independent woman such as she someday. There is nothing she cannot do.”
“Corinna.” Daria smiled at the girl but gave a tiny shake of her head.
Corinna withdrew her hand and lowered her eyes once more. “I have told my father this, but he does not understand—”
“Her father has been most pleased with her progress.” Daria tried to draw Adelphos’s attention. “He saw a superior mind there from an early age and was eager to see it developed.”
He waved a hand in the air. “I have seen enough. You may go.”
My Thoughts: So Shines The Night is one of Tracy Higley's Seven Wonders series. It takes you into Ephesus and the 19th Chapter of Acts, with the Apostle Paul. I fell in love with the cover and just knew I had to read it. I am a member of Tracy's caravan and this book pulled me in and I felt as if I was traveling with Daria through Ephesus. Tracy really does her research, Ephesus was one of the first churches, and it had a lot to battle and sorcery was a big one. Daria wants to know the One True God, but all she has known is Artemis and she is afraid of being abandoned.
This is a book not to be missed!
After the summer of 1964, life for Jocie Brooke will never be the same.
Life-changing events rarely happen in quiet Hollyhill, Kentucky, and
when they do, they are few and far between. But for young Jocie Brooke
and her family, they happen all at once during the humid summer of 1964.
Though on the surface things are just fine, it seems like everyone in
Jocie’s life has something they’re not saying, something they’re hiding
from her-and from themselves. As Jocie digs into her family’s past, she
stirs up a whirlwind of discoveries. Will she find the answers everyone
so desperately needs? Or will her questions lead to truths better left
hidden?
Combining unforgettable characters, true-to-life struggles, and the
perfect dose of humor and nostalgia, this riveting story from
bestselling author Ann Gabhart explores the very essence of new life and
love.
Ann H. Gabhart
Ann H. Gabhart is the bestselling author of several novels, including Angel Sister, Words Spoken True, The Outsider, The Believer, The Seeker, The Blessed, and The Gifted. She lives with her husband a mile from...
Jocie is 13 and it's 1964 in Hollyhill, Kentucky. It's been seven years since her mother left, and took her older sister, Tabitha with her. She has prayed for a dog, and for her sister to return. She wasn't expecting to get both in the same day. With her sister's return comes a lot of unanswered questions about why her mother left and why she didn't take Jocie.
David, the girls' father is struggling with the local newspaper, and hoping to become the pastor of Mt. Pleasant Church. He is a good man, loves God and wants to serve Him, yet he doesn't think the church will vote him in because he is divorced from his wife.
Aunt Love helps David with Jocie and also drives her crazy quoting scripture to her when she does something that drives Aunt Love batty.
Wes claims he's from Jupiter and is Jocie's best friend. She goes to him when she needs to be cheered up.
A lot happens during the summer of 1964 for Jocie, where some would say that Hollyhill is a quiet small town, the summer of '64 would prove you wrong.
Gina Holmes began her career in 1998, penning articles and short stories. In 2005 she founded the influential literary blog, Novel Journey now called Novel Rocket and she is also the founder of Inspire The Fire.
Her debut, Crossing Oceans, was a Christy and Gold Medallion finalist and winner of the Carol Award, INSPY, and RWA’s Inspirational Reader’s Choice, as well as being a CBA, ECPA, Amazon and PW Religion bestseller. Her sophomore novel, Dry as Rain, was also named a Christy finalist. Her upcoming novel, Wings of Glass will releases this month. She holds degrees in science and nursing and currently resides with her family in southern Virginia. She works too hard, laughs too loud, and longs to see others heal from their past and discover their God-given purpose.
ABOUT THE BOOK
From the bestselling author of Crossing Oceans comes a heart-rending yet uplifting story of friendship and redemption. On the cusp of womanhood, Penny is swept off her feet by a handsome farmhand with a confident swagger. Though Trent Taylor seems like Prince Charming and offers an escape from her one-stop-sign-town, Penny’s happily ever after lasts no longer than their breakneck courtship. Before the ink even dries on their marriage certificate, he hits her for the first time. It isn’t the last, yet the bruises that can’t be seen are the most painful of all.
When Trent is injured in a welding accident and his paycheck stops, he has no choice but to finally allow Penny to take a job cleaning houses. Here she meets two women from very different worlds who will teach her to live and laugh again, and lend her their backbones just long enough for her to grow her own.
My Thoughts: This book hit a little too close to home. I felt like I was reading my life story. I cried and laughed with Penny, Callie Mae, and Fatimah. These two women become Penny's life savers in so many ways. Introducing her to new things like bowling, having fun, Fatimah's cooking, cleaning for people. Penny began to find out who she was besides being Trent's wife. When Penny finds out she is pregnant, she believes that Trent will come around and care for her like he did in the beginning and their son, that she names Manny, short for Emanuel. Nothing changes, in fact things get worse, and when a woman from Trent's work is found dead, Norma, who would come by their house, Trent is fingered for the crime, but he swears he had nothing to do with it.
Gina writes a book that takes you right into the heart of an abused woman, who won't leave. I know that well because I didn't believe what was going on in my own life until I was away from it. Every woman, man, pastor, anyone who works with youth, needs to read this book! This will so show you the warning signs, and help you help someone who is in a relationship like this and seek help.
Deeanne Gist’s E-Short gives
readers a peek inside the world’s fair. Tempest in the White
City is a digital short story
available from online retailers for 99 cents.
Deeanne Gist fans won’t have to wait until the April 30 release of
It Happened at the Fair to read her latest work!
On March 19, readers will be able to purchase the e-short,
Tempest in the White City, a 40-page short story
prelude to It Happened at the Fair, for 99 cents from
all online retailers. While the characters from the
short story are not carried over into the full-length release, audiences
will get a taste of the awe-inspiring backdrop of the 1893 Chicago
World’s Fair and will be anxious to spend more time exploring the
exhibition.
In true Gist form, Tempest in the White City
combines her trademark humor with romance. Hunter Scott is one
of the elite. A Chicago World’s Fair guard specifically chosen for his
height, physique, character and ability to serve and protect. When
Hunter is overcome with debilitating abdominal pain, he stumbles to an
infirmary in the Fair’s Woman’s Building only to discover the doctor is
female—which he is none too happy about. But even worse, she has the
nerve to diagnose him—the toughest man west of anyplace east—with
constipation.
The 1893 Chicago World’s Fair overflowed with the latest
innovations welcomed by a throng of people from all around the globe.
This setting replete with history, intrigue and wonder caught Gist’s
attention and is sure to draw readers of both releases in as well. “I’m
always drawn to events in our country’s past that are strangely absent
from our history classes. Why the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition has
been left out, I don’t know, especially since it was such a pivotal
event for us,” explains Gist. “We were able to wow the world with our
scientific innovations, and it gave women their first official board
position recognized and approved by an Act of Congress (all before we
had the right to vote). But it was technology which claimed the day as
it nipped at the heels of horses, buggies and man-powered tools.”
More about It Happened at the
Fair: Young inventor Cullen McNamara gambles everything, including
the family farm, in order to make his family proud—and earn his father’s
entry money to the Fair Expo back—by selling his design for an
automatic sprinkler system inspired by his mother’s death in a mill
fire. Struggling with hearing loss from his previous life on the farm,
McNamara finds it difficult to communicate with potential buyers over
the din in the Fair’s Machinery Building. In an act of desperation, he
hires attractive Della Wentworth, a teacher of the deaf, to tutor him in
the art of lip-reading. Much like the newly invented Ferris Wheel,
Cullen is caught in a whirl between his girl back home, his dreams as an
inventor and his unexpected attraction to his new tutor. Can he keep
his feet on the ground or will he be carried away?
Award-winning author, Lena Nelson Dooley, has more than 675,000 books in print. She is a member of American Christian Fiction Writers http://www.acfw.com/ and president of the local chapter, DFW Ready Writers. She’s also a member of Christian Authors Network, CROWN Fiction Marketing, and Gateway Church in Southlake, Texas.
Lena loves James, her children, grandchildren, and great grandson. She loves chocolate, cherries, chocolate-covered cherries, and spending time with friends. Travel is always on her horizon. Cruising, Galveston, the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas, Mexico. One day it will be Hawaii and Australia, but probably not the same year. Helping other authors become published really floats her boat, with fifteen signing their first book contract after her mentoring. Three of her books have been awarded the Carol Award silver pins from American Christian Fiction Writers and she has received the ACFW Mentor of the Year award at their national conference. The high point of her day is receiving feedback from her readers, especially people whose lives have been changed by her books. And she loves chocolate, especially dark chocolate.
ABOUT THE BOOK
When Angus McKenna was forced to give two of his daughters to families in the wagon train, he promised he'd never try to contact them. Catherine made no such pledge. But when she sets out to find her sisters, she doesn't go alone. Angus sends Collin with her. Will they discover the two women---and love?
My Thoughts:
As an adoptee I have enjoyed this entire series. Lena does a great job of showing the feelings of what an adopted child goes through. She definitely nails it in this final book with Catherine who has been lied to about being a triplet, and her sisters being adopted out.
I highly recommend this book and this series. I would recommend reading them in order.
My husband and I have been watching this for the last three weeks, and YES we have noticed missing pieces from the Bible. My hope and prayer for anyone watching is that they will go to The Bible and seek out the truth there. In a mini series such as this there is no way they can put in everything. It would be hours long, and go on for years.
Also remember that Roma Downey and Mark Burnett are humans regardless of their faith status, they are human and will make mistakes.
Seek His Word! Don't rely on this series to be the be all end all for your Bible History. God will speak to you through His Word and it will become new every day.
