It’s here! The Long Shadow, my debut novel, is born today. I am so thrilled and thankful that so many people, including kids and adults, are reading it and telling me they love the book. Including, for example, Covenant Seminary professor Jerram Barrs: “I loved this book.”
Authors Saadia Faruqi and Laura Shovan team up to tell a middle-grade tale with two points of view: one a Muslim Pakistani-American girl who just wants to fit in at her big new school, and the other a Jewish girl whose best friend has dumped her.
Kia struggles to find a place socially on the track team, leaning heavily on her boyfriend. It’s not easy. And then her abuser–her grandfather–shows up and actually moves in with Kia and her mother. It’s a recipe for disaster, especially for the little six-year-old girl that her grandfather is getting to know as a volunteer at a day care.
I really enjoy time-slip novels–where two stories are told, one in the past, one in the present, alternating chapters. So
The Language of Spells by Garret Weyr, illustrated by Katie Hartnett Published by Chronicle Books, 2018, 299 pages Genre: Middle
The Jolly Regina and The Uncanny Express by Kara LaReau, Books 1 and 2 of the Unintentional Adventures of the Bland
Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool Published 2010 by Delacorte Press, 351 pages Genre: Historical middle grade/tween fiction, Newbery Medal
Carl Ellis Jr. tells Christians to speak into the culture, affirming core Biblical values without necessarily naming them as Biblical,
Starr Tree Farm by Ellen Parker Published 2013 by Crimson Romance, 200 pages Genre: sweet romantic suspense Laura has been
It’s a supernatural tale–will God transform a troubled young woman into an Elijah-style prophet?
Two alternating stories about Winter Maessen unfold in this book, separated by three years.
Jerram Barrs, a professor at Covenant Theological Seminary, thinks we need to be reading stories. But not just any stories.
“The greatest stories not only entertain and enlighten us, but also teach us something about who we are–and how we fit into God’s True Story of a redeemed creation.” That’s from an article just published in the seminary’s magazine, Covenant, fall/winter 2011, p. 10. He goes on to quote Tolkien’s “On Fairy Stories,” and urges us to read not only the gospel story but “many other stories as well that echo its joy and hope.”
Joanne’s an Illinois homeschooling mom struggling with the fact that her husband is losing a battle with cancer. She’s a survivor herself–she recovered from paralysis, thanks to an experimental adult-stem-cell treatment. Her family’s future looks uncertain, but she tries to trust God about it.
