Jody has written novels for the last 20 years (with a hiatus when her children were young). After many years of writing and honing her skills, she finally garnered national attention with her double final in the Genesis Contest, a fiction-writing contest for unpublished writers through ACFW (American Christian Fiction Writers).
Her first published book, The Preacher’s Bride (2010 Bethany House Publishers), became a best seller and has won multiple awards.
Her second book, The Doctor’s Lady, released in September of 2011, and her third book, Unending Devotion, is out now. She’s currently busy researching and writing another book!
Jody has been married for twenty years to her college sweetheart. Jody has five children ranging in ages from 15 to 6, with a set of twin daughters in the mix to make things more lively.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
High-Stakes Drama Meets High-Tension Romance
In 1883 Michigan, Lily Young is on a mission to save her lost sister, or die trying. Heedless of the danger, her searches of logging camps lead her to Harrison and into the sights of Connell McCormick, a man doing his best to add to the hard-earned fortunes of his lumber baron father.
Posing during the day as a photographer's assistant, Lily can't understand why any God-fearing citizen would allow evil to persist and why men like Connell McCormick turn a blind eye to the crime rampant in the town. But Connell is boss-man of three of his father's lumber camps in the area, and like most of the other men, he's interested in clearing the pine and earning a profit. He figures as long as he's living an upright life, that's what matters.
Lily challenges everything he thought he knew, and together they work not only to save her sister but to put an end to the corruption that's dominated Harrison for so long.
BOOK DETAILS:
Paperback: 374 pages
Publisher: Bethany House Publishers (September 1, 2012)
This question haunts 20-year-old Jamie Collins. A junior at Santa Clara University in 1986, Jamie has friends, a professor who mentors him, and a promising future as a writer.
Then the dreams begin – nightmarish visions that transport him back to a time and place fifty years before he was born: Titanic’s maiden voyage in 1912! Less than a week before the 74th anniversary of its sinking, Jamie discovers that his fate is inexplicably linked to that of the famous vessel. Somehow, the two timelines are overlapping, and when Titanic dies this time, Jamie will die along with it.
The dreams reveal something evil stalking the ill-fated ship, something that expedites the collision which sinks her. Jamie realizes that the only way to stop this evil and prevent his own death may be to prevent Titanic from sinking in the first place.
But how? How can he stop that ship from sinking in 1912 when he hadn’t even been born yet? And even if he can stop it – should he? What will be the effect on history if he succeeds? Jamie’s quest to fulfill his destiny ties friendsand family together in ways he could never have imagined.
A Matter of Time is an emotionally charged voyage into the value of friendship, the power of love, the impact of evil, and the vagaries of Fate. BOOK DETAILS:
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Michael Bowler grew up in San Rafael, California. He attended St. Raphael’s School and Marin Catholic High School before attending Santa Clara University. Titanic and her tragic fate fascinated him for as far back as he can remember. He has a vast collection of artwork, memorabilia and virtually every book ever written about the disaster. He majored in English and Theatre at Santa Clara and got a master’s in film production from Loyola Marymount University. He partnered with two friends as producer, writer, and/or director on several films, most notably “Fatal Images,” “Dead Girls,” “Hell Spa” (later re-edited and titled “Club Dead”), “Things” and “Things II.” He has written a number of unproduced screenplays and is currently working on other novels he has outlined. He’s been teaching high school in Hawthorne, California for over twenty years. He has also been a volunteer Big Brother to seven different boys over 28 years with the Catholic Big Brothers Big Sisters program and a volunteer within the juvenile justice system in Los Angeles for 27 years. He is a passionate advocate for the fair treatment of children and teens in California, something that is sorely lacking in this state. His first novel, A Boy and His Dragon, was originally written in the 1980’s before fantasy stories enjoyed a major renaissance, and has remained unpublished to this day. It is intended as the first of a trilogy. A Matter of Time, his second novel, was originally written in the 1980’s and completed in the mid-1990’s as time permitted. You can visit Michael on the web at www.michaeljbowler.webs.com. Follow Michael Bowler on Twitter: @BradleyWallaceM Friend Michael Bowler at Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1377702356
GIVEAWAY!
To be entered to win a print copy of A Matter of Time, complete the mandatory entries in the Rafflecopter form below. After you complete the mandatory entries, more will be unlocked and you may complete which ever of those you would like. Giveaway is open to residents of the US and Canada only and ends October 28, 2012 at 11:59 p.m. (EST). Good luck!
The third book in the Pam of Babylon series, Dream Lover is a compilation of character studies of the women and one man who Jack Smith left behind. Slowly, they make their way to the Long Island village of Babylon for an audience with his widow. No longer in denial and stronger than she thought possible, Pam Smith is able to confront the horror of her marriage in its totality as she draws a new picture of the man she was married to. The new discoveries she makes empowers her and she is able to maintain her strength and the grace and compassion she’s known for. Truly a formidable woman, Pam conquers her worst demons in Dream Lover.
Pam Of Babylon (book #1) by Suzanne Jenkins is available to purchase at Amazon & Barnes & Noble
Don't You Forget About Me (book #2) by Suzanne Jenkins is available to purchase at Amazon & Barnes & Noble
Dream Lover (book #3) by Suzanne Jenkins is available to purchase at Amazon
About the Author:
Suzanne Jenkins lives at the west Michigan lakeshore with her husband, two dogs and two sheep. Her latest books are Pam of Babylon, Don’t You Forget About Me and Dream Lover.
Beverly's first venture into adult fiction is the best-selling trilogy, The Heritage of Lancaster County, including The Shunning, a suspenseful saga of Katie Lapp, a young Amish woman drawn to the modern world by secrets from her past. The book is loosely based on the author's maternal grandmother, Ada Ranck Buchwalter, who left her Old Order Mennonite upbringing to marry a Bible College student. One Amish-country newspaper claimed Beverly's work to be "a primer on Lancaster County folklore" and offers "an insider's view of Amish life."
Booksellers across the country, and around the world, have spread the word of Beverly's tender tales of Plain country life. A clerk in a Virginia bookstore wrote, "Beverly's books have a compelling freshness and spark. You just don't run across writing like that every day. I hope she'll keep writing stories about the Plain people for a long, long time."
A member of the National League of American Pen Women, as well as a Distinguished Alumnus of Evangel University, Lewis has written over 80 books for children, youth, and adults, many of them award-winning. She and her husband, David, make their home in Colorado, where they enjoy hiking, biking, and spending time with their family. They are also avid musicians and fiction "book worms."
ABOUT THE BOOK:
The Latest in Chart-Topping Amish Fiction from Beverly Lewis
Twenty-seven-year-old Joanna Kurtz has made several trips to the altar, but never as a bride. The single young Amishwoman is a closet writer with a longing to be published something practically unheard of in her Lancaster County community. Yet Joanna's stories aren't her only secret. She also has a beau who is courting her from afar, unbeknownst even to her sister, Cora, who, though younger, seems to have suitors to spare.
Eben Troyer is a responsible young Amishman who hopes to make Joanna Kurtz his bride--if he can ever leave his parents' farm in Shipshewana, Indiana. Yet with his only brother off in the English world, intent on a military career, Eben's hopes for building a life with his dear Joanna are dimming, and patience is wearing thin. Will Joanna ever be more than a bridesmaid?
Tomorrow morning, a nuclear holocaust will destroy the planet. Two people carry the keys to survival: A teenage boy and an intergalactic traveler.
By the late 22nd century, the Great Recession of the early 2000s has lead to a worldwide police state. A ruined United States barely functions. Government control masks chaos, dissenters are sent to camps, and technology is outlawed. War rages while the authorities proclaim the Great Peace.
Finally it all breaks down. We’re in New York City on the eve of nuclear Armageddon. In the morning, ultimate destructive forces will wipe out all life on earth. Only Jeremy Edgarton, a 16-year-old, tech genius and revolutionary; and Eliana, the angelic, off-world traveler sent to Earth on a mission to prevent her planet’s death, can save the world. Join Eliana and Jeremy as they begin a quest to save two doomed planets … and find each other.
Winner of Four National Awards: ● 2011 IPPY (Independent Press) Award Gold Medal in Visionary Fiction. ● 2011 Indie Excellence Award in Visionary Fiction (Winner of Catergory) ● Best Books of 2011, USA Book News:
Winner, New Age Fiction
Finalist Fantasy/Sci-Fi
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Sandy Nathan writes to amaze and delight, uplift and inspire, as well as thrill and occasionally terrify. She is known for creating unforgettable characters and putting them in do or die situations. She writes in genres ranging from science fiction, fantasy, and visionary fiction to juvenile nonfiction to spirituality and memoir.
“I write for people who like challenging, original work. My reader isn’t satisfied by a worn-out story or predictable plot. I do my best to give my readers what they want.”
Mrs. Nathan’s books have won twenty-two national awards, including multiple awards from oldest, largest, and most prestigious contests for independent publishers. Her books have earned rave critical reviews and customer reviews of close to five-star averages on Amazon. Most are Amazon bestsellers.
Sandy was born in San Francisco, California. She grew up in the hard-driving, achievement orientated corporate culture ofSilicon Valley. Sandy holds Master’s Degrees in Economics and Marriage, Family, and Child Counseling. She was a doctoral student at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and has been an economic analyst, businesswoman, and negotiation coach, as well as author.
Mrs. Nathan lives with her husband on their California ranch. They bred Peruvian Paso horses for almost twenty years. She has three grown children and two grandchildren.
The Irish Republican Army (IRA) has for decades pursued the goal of unifying its homeland into a single sovereign nation, ending British rule in Northern Ireland. Over the years, the IRA has been dramatized in motion pictures directed by John Ford (The Informer), Carol Reed (Odd Man Out), David Lean (Ryan’s Daughter), Neil Jordan (Michael Collins), and many others. International film stars as Liam Neeson, Brad Pitt, James Mason, Robert Mitchum, James Cagney, Richard Gere, and Anthony Hopkins have portrayed IRA members as heroic patriots, psychotic terrorists and tormented rebels.
This illustrated history analyzes celluloid depictions of the IRA from the 1916 Easter Rising to the peace process of the 1990s. Topics include America’s role in creating both the IRA and its cinematic image, the organization’s brief association with the Nazis, and critical reception of IRA films in Ireland, Britain and the United States.
DETAILS: Paperback: 273 pages Publisher: McFarland (April 25, 2012) Language: English ISBN-10: 0786447362 ISBN-13: 978-0786447367 Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 6.9 x 0.8 inches
The Irish Republican Army has appeared in over eighty motion pictures, granting it an unprecedented and ironic cinematic presence. A secret “outlawed” organization for most of its history, the IRA has rarely consisted of more than a few hundred active members. Like Basque separatists in Spain, it is involved in a protracted internecine struggle with few global ramifications. The IRAis dedicated to ending British rule in a corner of a neutral island with a population equivalent to that of West Virginia, a heavily subsidized province Britain has repeatedly stated that it has no selfish, strategic, or economic interest in retaining. An IRA victory would not create a haven for international terrorists, destabilize NATO, disrupt world markets, or endanger British security. The parochial dispute between militant Irish Republicans who want a single unified Irish state and the Unionists who wish Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom claimed three thousand lives in thirty years, a devastating number for a small community, but far less significant than the loss of life in Kosovo in a single year. Other revolutionary organizations have inflicted more harm, espouse more ominous ideologies, and pose greater threats to international stability. Yet none of these militant forces has captivated moviemakers like the Irish Republican Army.
The IRA commands a greater screen presence than the PLO, ETA, or the FLN because it is Irish. It is not the nature, size, or significance of the organization, or the value of the land in dispute, but the people it involves that attracts attention. As James MacKillop notes, as a small nation, Ireland is uniquely connected to the outside world because of the English language and its extensive diaspora.1 Unlike a regional conflict in Spain or Serbia, the Irish Troubles reverberate around the world. A film about theIRA can easily star Irish, American, and British actors speaking their native language and draw audiences in London, New York, Toronto, and Melbourne. A nation of only 4.4 million, the Irish Republic has developed a prolific film industry whose producers can rely on overseas markets filmmakers in Hungary or Greece cannot.2
The IRA has been a subject explored by major directors from three countries, including John Ford, John Frankenheimer, Carol Reed, David Lean, Neil Jordan, and Jim Sheridan. IRA characters have been portrayed by international stars such as Victor McLaglen, James Cagney, Anthony Hopkins, James Mason, and Brad Pitt. Films about the Irish Republican Army range from realistic docudramas like Paul Greengrass’ Bloody Sunday (Hell’s Kitchen Films, 2002), shot with handheld cameras and natural lighting to create the sensation of watching 1972 newsreel footage, to Joseph Merhi’s action farce Riot (PM Entertainment Group, 1999) in which a British superhero battles IRA bikers in the streets of Los Angeles during a race riot.
Whether portrayed as a heroic patriot, ruthless terrorist, corrupt gangster, or troubled outcast, the Irish rebel has emerged as a universally recognized cinematic archetype.
This book takes a “history vs. Hollywood” approach to the IRA film, tracing, as objectively as possible, the record of the IRA from its emergence during the Easter Rising of 1916 through the peace process of the 1990s, then examining its depictions on film.
The introduction presents an overview of Irish history, focusing on the eight-hundred-year pattern of invasions and rebellions often referenced in IRA films. Chapter 1 examines the role the IRA played during the Irish War of Independence and the Civil War that followed. Chapter 2 reviews film portrayals of Michael Collins, the charismatic revolutionary who founded the IRA and later fought against former comrades who rejected the treaty with Britain he championed.
Chapter 3 details the IRA’s fleeting connections with German intelligence during the Second World War. Though IRA interactions with the Nazis involved small sums of money and the negligible use of arms, filmmakers have found it a compelling sidebar to World War II, creating an onscreen Irish Fifth Column which never existed in reality.
Chapter 4 chronicles the Troubles that ignited in 1969 and led to the reemergence of the IRA both in the streets of Belfast and onfilm. It was during this time that Ireland began releasing movies about the IRA, offering more genuine and contentious views of the conflict than British and American productions. A Jimmy Cagney movie about the War of Independence made in the 1950s, a period of low-level conflict, generated little controversy. In contrast, Irish films like In the Name of the Father (Hell’s Kitchen Productions, 1992) or Some Mother’s Son (Castle Rock Entertainment, 1996) were derided as inflammatory propaganda by Unionists and their Tory supporters.
Chapter 5 discusses two classic IRA-related films, John Ford’s The Informer (RKO 1935) and Carol Reed’s Odd Man Out (Two Cities Films, 1947), both of which deleted political references to satisfy British censors. As in many other IRA films, the partisan conflict was muted to serve as a backdrop for a more personal drama to attain wider appeal.
Chapter 6 describes the major role Americans played in both creating the Irish Republican Army and shaping its cinematic image. Fifty years before the Easter Rising in Dublin, Confederate and Union veterans, many calling themselves members of the Irish Republican Army, invaded Canada with plans to seize Montreal to pressure England into withdrawing from Ireland. For generations, America was the source of arms, money, volunteers, and refuge for Irish Republicans. Irish-American director John Ford, whose cousin was an IRA leader, directed several films featuring IRA characters, even inserting them into his romantic comedy The Quiet Man (Argosy/Republic, 1952). Later Hollywood filmmakers relied on the IRA to provide terrorist villains in the decade between the end of the Cold War and 9/11. Movies like Patriot Games (Paramount, 1992) and Blown Away (MGM, 1994), however, made it clear that the heartless terrorist was an IRA renegade, making the actual organization appear more reasonable in contrast and avoiding offending the IRA’s American supporters.
Later chapters review representative plots and characters, such as the ubiquitous informer. Chapter 10 evaluates films depicting the status of the IRA since the 1998 Good Friday or Belfast Agreement. Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Five Minutes in Heaven (Big FishFilms, 2009) presents the Troubles as a past event, while Damian Chapa’s I.R.A. King of Nothing (BBI Entertainment, 2006) suggests the secret army is merely in hiatus, waiting for a time to strike.
In the 1890 thriving coastal town of Holliston, Maine, the leading lumber baron's son, Warren Brentwood, III, returns from his years away at college and traveling to take up his position as heir apparent to his father's business empire.
Esperanza Estrada, daughter of a Portuguese immigrant fisherman and a local woman, lives on the wrong side of town, surrounded by a brood of brothers and sisters and a careworn mother. She is unable to pretend she is anything but "one of those Estradas." When she overhears of a position to clean house at a local high school teacher's home on Elm Street, she jumps at the opportunity--to be able to run into Warren Brentwood now and again, but also to imbibe of the culture and intellectual atmosphere of the Stocktons.
When rumors about Espy and her respected employer begin to circulate, the entire church congregation and then the community pronounce judgment on her behavior. Warren believes the lie and his loss of faith in her causes Espy to give up without a fight. She leaves her family and hometown for the nearest city with little money and no acquaintances and is forced to spend the night on the street. A man who heads a mission for the homeless finds Espy and offers her shelter. Espy finds the true love of God while working at the mission. Will she be able to forgive the townspeople and return home?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Ruth knew she wanted to be a writer ever since she wrote her first story--a spy thriller--at the age of twelve. She studied comparative literature at Smith College, spending her junior year at the Sorbonne in Paris. After college, she taught English in the Canary Islands then worked in international development in Miami, Florida, before moving to the Netherlands, where for the next several years, she juggled both writing and raising her three children.
In 1994, her second manuscript was a finalist in Romance Writers of America's Golden Heart competition. In 2002, her sixth manuscript took second place in the Laurie Contest of RWA's Smoky Mountain chapter. The final judge requested her full manuscript and this became her first published book, Winter Is Past, which was spotlighted in Christian Retailing magazine. Since then, Ruth has gone on to publish thirteen historical romances and one novella. Her books have been translated into Dutch, Italian, Polish and Afrikaans . Her second historical, Wild Rose, was chosen by Booklist as a "Top Ten Christian Fiction" selection in 2005.
Ruth lives on the coast of Maine where she enjoys gardening, walking, reading romances and gazing at the ocean plotting her next romance.
If you would like to read the first chapter excerpt of Her Good Name, go HERE.
