by admin | Aug 4, 2008 | Books
This week, the
Christian Fiction Blog Alliance
is introducing
(Tyndale House Publishers – July 9, 2008)
by
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Chris Fabry has a variety of titles to his credit including At the Corner of Mundane and Grace, Spiritually Correct Bedtime Stories, Away with the Manger, The H.I.M. Book, and The 77 Habits of Highly Effective Christians. His latest work is a collaboration with Jerry B. Jenkins and Dr. Tim LaHaye.
Chris has recently completed the final book in the Left Behind The Kids series, available Fall 2004. Readers of all ages have followed the lives of Judd, Vicki, Lionel, and the others. Now read how their exciting stories culminate in book 40 of this beloved series. Dogwood is his first adult fiction.
Chris and his wife, Andrea, are the parents of nine children and make their home in Colorado. Chris has worked in Christian radio and now enjoys narrating audio books as well as writing. He believes his career as a husband and father is the real evidence of God’s grace in his life.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
In the small town of Dogwood, West Virginia, Karin has buried her shattered dreams by settling for a faithful husband whose emotional distance from her deep passions and conflicts leaves her isolated. Loaded with guilt, she tries to raise three small children and “do life” the best she can.
Will returns to Dogwood intent on pursuing the only woman he has ever loved–only to find there is far more standing in his way than lost years in prison. The secrets of Will and Karin’s past begin to emerge through Danny Boyd, a young boy who wishes he hadn’t survived the tragedy that knit those two together as well as tore them apart.
The trigger that will lay their pain bare and force them to face it rather than flee is the unlikely figure of Ruthie Bowles, a withered, wiry old woman who leads Karin so deep into her anger against God that it forces unexpected consequences.
If you would like to read the first chapter of Dogwood, go HERE
MY REVIEW:
Dogwood is a book about love – unfulfilled love and sacrificial love. It is also a book about hate and its consequences, dreams, regrets, secrets, guilt, heroes and villains. It is a story filled with twists and turns where things are not always as they seem. The story is told from several points of view which I sometimes found a little confusing but they tied together neatly by the time the story ended.
I most enjoyed the wisdom of Ruthie such as the following conversation with Karin on page 85:
“Basically life is a dance through a field full of cow manure. Most people won’t even go into the field; they go around it and pretend. Or they try to tiptoe here and there and stay close to the fence. They never see that all the fertilizer creates some beautiful flowers and some of the greenest grass you’ll ever see.”
“So you what, wallow in it?”
“No, girl, I put my hip boots on and waltz through the cow pies.”
There is much to be gleaned from Dogwood. It might even take a second or third reading to harvest it all.
by admin | Aug 4, 2008 | Books
It is time to play a Wild Card! Every now and then, a book that I have chosen to read is going to pop up as a FIRST Wild Card Tour. Get dealt into the game! (Just click the button!) Wild Card Tours feature an author and his/her book’s FIRST chapter!
You never know when I might play a wild card on you!
Today’s Wild Card author is:
and her book:
B&H Fiction (July 1, 2008)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Rebeca Seitz is Founder and President of Glass Road Public Relations. An author for several years, Prints Charming being her first novel. Sister’s Ink was the first book in the SISTERS, INK series of novels. (At the center of the creativity and humor are four unlikely young adult sisters, each separately adopted during early childhood into the loving home of Marilyn and Jack Sinclair.)
Rebeca cut her publicity teeth as the first dedicated publicist for the fiction division of Thomas Nelson Publishers. In 2005, Rebeca resigned from WestBow and opened the doors of GRPR, the only publicity firm of its kind in the country dedicated solely to representing novelists writing from a Christian worldview.
Rebeca makes her home in Kentucky with her husband, Charles, and their son, Anderson.
Visit the author’s website.
Product Details
List Price: $14.99
Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: B&H Fiction (July 1, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0805446915
ISBN-13: 978-0805446913
AND NOW…THE FIRST CHAPTER:
Chapter One
“I mean it, Harry,” Kendra Sinclair let a bit of her fright and frustration leak into her tone.
Harry’s chuckle mocked. “You know you don’t. Come on, everybody has to eat.”
“Like I said, I’ve already eaten.” And I don’t need this kind of complication right now, even if I want it.
“Dessert, then, Kendra. You don’t want to end the day without dessert, do you?”
Yes, she did. No, she didn’t. Well, yeah, she did. She should. The sigh was out before she could stop it.
“I heard that. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
“But—”
“See you soon.”
Kendra slammed the phone down and stared at it, waiting for it to jump up and bite her. It might as well have, for all the craziness it had brought her life in the past two months.
Okay, six months.
But there was that two month lull, so really, four months altogether.
“Imparticular man,” she muttered, pacing away from the phone and back. Her purple toenails gave a nice contrast as her feet sank into plush carpet the color of a pure snow drift. “Kendra Sinclair, you are not a conniving woman. What has gotten into you?”
She plopped down into the overstuffed couch the saleslady had called “polar bear” and pulled Miss Kitty onto her lap. Stroking the cat’s fur, she stared across the room. Tufts of fur fell onto the sofa, blending into the fabric there.
“Where’s Oprah when you need her?”
The cat purred its approval of Kendra’s long fingernails and sank down further into its mistress’s lap.
“Probably on some beach with Stedman, laughing at the rest of us who haven’t gotten it all figured out just yet. Right, Miss Kitty?”
The motoring purr increased in volume and Kendra smiled.
The phone rang and she jerked so hard, Miss Kitty toppled to the floor.
“Oh, sorry!” Kendra tossed the apology to Miss Kitty and jerked up the handset. “Hello?”
“Hey, how’s Stars Hill’s finest lady tonight?” Darin’s smooth voice hummed over the line and Kendra’s heart did a double take, frantically downshifting from the previous call. She straightened on the couch, then felt stupid when she realized he couldn’t possibly see how out of sorts she was through the phone line.
“Oh, I’m good. Good. Yeah, really good. How are you?”
“Wow, that’s three goods in the first five seconds. Something wrong?”
She propped her elbow on the arm of the couch and rested her jaw in her palm. Other women lowered their gazes and offered demure smiles when they were out of control. But Kendra? She stammered and fell all over herself with streams of words. “No, no, nothing’s wrong. Just sitting here talking to Miss Kitty.”
“Lucky cat.”
Kendra chuckled, feeling her heart rate settle back into the normal range even while her skin heated at the sound. “Tell her that. I knocked her off my lap when the phone rang.
“And she hasn’t clawed your eyes out yet?””
“Declawed, remember?.”
“Oh, right. Anyway, I know it’s last minute but I was wondering if you’d had dinner yet.”
“Oh, um, no. Well, yes, but that was a couple of hours ago. I mean, not that I need to eat anymore today. Gotta watch my waistline and all–”
His chuckle stopped her mid-sentence. “I’ll be over there in about fifteen minutes. See you soon.”
She heard the click of the phone and stared at it. Not five minutes ago a different man had said the same words. Her silk caftan swirled as she jumped up and fled to the bedroom, praying the first caller hadn’t been serious and was just leading her on.
Which her heart of hearts knew wouldn’t be out of character for him at all.
by admin | Aug 1, 2008 | Books
It is August FIRST, time for the FIRST Blog Tour! (Join our alliance! Click the button!) The FIRST day of every month we will feature an author and his/her latest book’s FIRST chapter!
Today’s feature author is:
and her book:
Romancing Hollywood Nobody
NavPress Publishing Group (July 15, 2008)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Lisa Samson is the author of twenty books, including the Christy Award-winning Songbird. Apples of Gold was her first novel for teens
These days, she’s working on Quaker Summer, volunteering at Kentucky Refugee Ministries, raising children and trying to be supportive of a husband in seminary. (Trying . . . some days she’s downright awful. It’s a good thing he’s such a fabulous cook!) She can tell you one thing, it’s never dull around there.
Other Novels by Lisa:
Hollywood Nobody, Finding Hollywood Nobody, Straight Up, Club Sandwich, Songbird, Tiger Lillie, The Church Ladies, Women’s Intuition: A Novel, Songbird, The Living End
Visit her at her website.
Product Details
List Price: $12.99
Paperback: 195 pages
Publisher: NavPress Publishing Group (July 15, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1600062210
ISBN-13: 978-1600062216
AND NOW…THE FIRST CHAPTER:
Monday, April 30, 6:00 a.m.
My eyes open. Yes, yes, yes. The greatest man in the entire world
is brewing coffee right here in the TrailMama.
“Dad.”
“Morning, Scotty. The big day.”
“Yep.”
“And this time, you won’t have to drive.”
I throw back the covers on my loft bed and slip down to the dinette of our RV. My dad sleeps on the dinette bed. He’s usually got it turned back into our kitchen table by 5:00 a.m. What can I say? The guy may be just as much in love with cheese as I am, but honestly? Our body clocks are about as different as Liam Neeson and Seth Green.
You know what I mean?
And we have lots of differences.
For one, he’s totally a nonfiction person and I’m fiction all the way. For two, he has no fashion sense whatsoever. And for three, he has way more hope for people at the outset than I do. Man, do I have a lot to learn on that front.
He hands me a mug and I sip the dark liquid. I was roasting coffee beans for a while there, but Dad took the mantle upon himself and he does a better job.
Starbucks Schmarbucks.
He hands me another mug and I head to the back of the TrailMama to wake up Charley. My grandmother looks so sweet in the morning, her frosted, silver-blonde hair fanned out on the pillow. You know, she could pass for an aging mermaid. A really short one, true.
I wave the mug as close as I can to her nose without fear of her rearing up, knocking the mug and burning her face. “Charley . . .” I singsong. “Time to get a move on. Time to get back on the road.”
And boy is this a switch!
All I can say is, your life can be going one way for years and years and then, snap-snap-snap-in-a-Z, it looks like it had major plastic surgery.
Only in reverse. Imagine life just getting more and more real. I like it.
Charley opens her eyes. “Hey, baby. You brought me coffee. You get groovier every day.”
She’s a hippie. What can I say?
And she started drinking coffee again when I ran away last fall in Texas. I mean, I didn’t really run away. I went somewhere with a perfectly good reason for not telling anyone, and I was planning to return as soon as my mission was done.
She scootches up to a sitting position, hair still in a cloud, takes the mug and, with that dazzling smile still on her face (think Kate Hudson) sips the coffee. She sighs.
“I know,” I say. “How did we make it so long without him?”
“Now that he’s with us, I don’t know. But somehow we did, didn’t we, baby? It may not have always been graceful and smooth, but we made it together.”
I rub her shoulder. “Yeah. I guess you could say we pretty much did.”
The engine hums its movin’-on song. “Dad’s ready to pull out. Let’s hit it.”
“Scotland, here we come.”
Scotland? Well, sort of.
An hour later
This has been a great school year. In addition to the online courses I’m taking through Indiana University High School, Dad’s been teaching me and man, is he smart. I’m sure most sixteen-(almost seventeen)-year-olds think their fathers are the smartest guys in the world, but in my case it happens to be true.
Okay, even I have to admit he probably won’t win the Nobel Prize for physics or anything, but he’s street smart and there’s no replacing that sort of thing. Big plus: he knows high school math. We’re both living under the radar. And he’s taken our faux last name. Dawn. He’s now Ezra Fitzgerald Dawn. After Ezra Pound, one of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Lost Generation friends.
I’m just lovin’ that.
“Your mom would have loved the name change, Scotty.”
He told me about his life as an FBI agent, some of the cases he worked on, and well, I’d like to tell you he had a life like Sydney Bristow’s in Alias, but he probably spent most of his time on com-puter work and sitting around on his butt waiting for someone to make a move. The FBI, apparently, prefers to trick people more than corner them in showdowns and shootouts. The Robertsman case was his first time undercover in the field and we know how terribly that worked out for him. And me. And Charley. And Babette, my mother.
I pull out my math book and sit in the passenger seat of the TrailMama. “Ready for some ‘rithmetic, Dad?”
“You bet.” He turns to me and smiles. His smile still makes my heart warm up like a griddle ready to make smiley-face pan-cakes. I flip on my book light.
It’s still dark and we’re headed to Asheville, North Carolina for Charley’s latest shoot. A film about Bonnie Prince Charlie called Charlie’s Lament. How ironic is that? The director, Bartholomew (don’t dare call him Bart) Evans, is a real jerk. I’m not going to be hanging around the set much even though Liam Neeson is Lord George Murray, the voice of reason Prince Charlie refused to listen to. But hey, that’s my history lesson. We’re still on math.
I finish up the last lesson in geometry . . . finally! Honestly, I still don’t understand it without a mammoth amount of help, but the workbook’s filled and that’s a good thing.
There.
I set down my pen. “Finished!”
Dad gives a nod as he continues to look out the windshield. You might guess, despite the tattoos, piercings, and his gleaming bald head, he’s a very careful driver. And he won’t let me drive like Charley did.
“So . . . driver’s license then, right?”
He’s been holding that over my head so I’d finish the math course.
“You know it. After the film, we’ll request your new birth certificate and go from there.”
“What state are we supposedly from?” The FBI has given us a new identity, official papers and all that.
“Wyoming.”
“Are you kidding me? Wyoming? Why?”
“Think about it, honey. Who’s from Wyoming?”
“Lots of people?”
“Know any of them?”
“Uh. No.”
“See?”
“Okay, Wyoming it is, then.”
“You realize you’ll only have my beat-up old black truck to drive around.” The same truck we’re towing behind the TrailMama.
“I’ll take it.”
So here’s the thing. The rest of the entire world thinks my father was shot in the chest and killed when he was outed by a branch of the mob he was after. This mob was financing James Robertsman’s campaign for governor of Maryland.
The guy’s running for president of the United States now.
I kid you not.
Wish I was kidding.
We thought he was after us for several years because Charley knew too much. But then last fall, we found out the guy chasing me was my father, and Robertsman is most likely cocky enough to think he took care of everything he needed. I say that’s quite all right. Although, I have to admit, the fact that a dirtbag like that guy may end up in the Oval Office sickens me to no end.
Thanks to that guy, we had been running in fear from my own father.
The thing is, I could be really mad about all those wasted years, and a portion of me feels that way. But we’ve been given another chance, and I’ll be darned if I throw away these days being angry. There’s too much to be thankful for.
Don’t get me wrong. I still have my surly days. I don’t want Dad and Charley to think they have it as easy as all that!
Okay, time to blog.
Hollywood Nobody: April 30
Let’s cut to the chase, Nobodies!
Today’s Seth News: It’s official. Seth Haas and Karissa Bonano are officially each other’s exclusive main squeeze. The two were seen coming out of a popular LA tattoo parlor with each other’s names on the inside of their forearms. How cliché. And pass the barf bag.
Today’s Violette Dillinger Report: Violette has broken up with Joe Mason of Sweet Margaret. She wanted you all to know that long-distance romances are hard for any couple, but espe-cially for people as young as she is. “Joe needed to live his life. I’m on the road a lot. It wasn’t fair to either of us.” Sounds like she’s definitely not on the road to Britney. I’m just sayin’.
Today’s Rave: Mandy Moore. The girl can really sing! And her latest album is filled with good songs. The bubble gum days of insipid teen heartbreak are over. She’s finally come into her own. (Wish some others would follow her example, but I won’t hold my breath. And man, are we on the theme of bratty stars today or what? Well, there are just so many of them from which to choose!)
Today’s Rant: Crazy expensive celebrity weddings. What? If they spend more, will they be more likely to stay together? I have no idea. Mariah Carey’s $25,000 dress pales in comparison to Catherine Zeta-Jones’s $100,000 gown. What are those things made of?
Today’s Quote: “Dream as if you’ll live forever, live as if you’ll die today.” James Dean
In the small town of Dogwood, West Virginia, Karin has buried her shattered dreams by settling for a faithful husband whose emotional distance from her deep passions and conflicts leaves her isolated. Loaded with guilt, she tries to raise three small children and “do life” the best she can.
