Faith
Fiction
Novels You Can't Put Down
She could hear them hooting like baying hounds now, scenting their quarry, and she knew death would come soon.
“Psst, up here.”
Drexlee jerked her head up to see a shaggy-haired boy in the tree, beckoning her with an outstretched hand.
“I’ll pull you up.”
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She didn’t have to think twice, getting to her feet and taking his hand as he lifted her into the tree’s lower branches.
“Follow me,” the ragged barefoot kid told her.
She summoned the last of her strength to climb higher into the tree until she reached a platform made of branches. She sat on it, trying to recover.
“Shhh,” he told her, finger to his lips.
Peering down, she saw their lights searching along the shore, passing right beneath them. The boy waited until they were gone…
2035 AD: Connor Stanton and Rebecca Pedtke were orphaned when their parent’s stronghold was overrun by a renegade army. He was twelve and she was ten when they escaped into the Wyoming wilderness to an emergency hideout their parents had prepared for such a catastrophe.
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After four years of surviving on their own, when they believed they could endure almost anything, Connor was forced to shoot three men who found and attacked them.
They rescued Vickie, a girl their own age who’d been a captive of the attackers, but she presented a whole new set of challenges because of the crude realities she brought with her. She questioned their belief in God and their innocent relationship with each other. Later, their attempt to join a fortified community of Christian believers brought even more struggles, ultimately making them targets of Maddix Rutledge, the criminal strongman, believed to have killed their parents.
Well, what are you going to do, Mrs. Williams? From what you’ve said, you can’t even take care of the ones you have now.”
Janelle held her one-year-old, Aaron in her arms, and two-year-old Miriam, sat on the chair next to her, pulling a sandal off and on.
“It’s not right and I can’t do it. I won’t do it,” Janelle said.
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“I don’t know what to tell you, Mrs. Williams. We can help you with it. You’re barely into your second trimester and it would be an easy procedure. You’d hardly feel a thing.”
Janelle sniffed and spun around, catching the younger woman’s eyes. “Oh, I would feel it alright; for the rest of my life I would feel it.”
The young woman shook her head disgustedly and turned away.
Janelle defied societal pressure and followed her heart that day. She had no idea the impact her unborn child would have on the world one day.
We just want to talk to you, Johnny,” the man yelled into the darkness. “Then we’ll let all of you go. But this is your last chance. If you don’t come out right now, I’m gonna hurt your little scout buddies.”
After Johnny’s scout troop witnessed a murder, he escaped into the sage brush.
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Commentators agreed that he did the right thing by remaining hidden, but he never quite accepted that because he could still hear the screams of his friends, pleading with him to come out of hiding and save them.
Johnny now goes by Jack. He’s middle-aged and comfortable. None of his church friends know he’s the lone survivor of the famous Guadalupe Massacre. Even though he was psychologically scarred by that horrible event, terror is the last thing he expects in adulthood. But someone’s changing that, and the stakes are much higher than in his childhood. Is meaningless, violent death Jack’s destiny, or is this his opportunity to redeem his past? Whichever, the situation is about to draw him very close to God.
David and Courtney had different motives for visiting the Bay Area. For her it was a last-ditch effort to communicate some financial realities to her husband and save their marriage. For him it was to celebrate the New Year in his usual opulent style, made possible by her success as a hedge fund manager.
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He knew she was on another of her “marriage revival” kicks, but whenever that happened, he placated her until she gave up. However, after a week of searching for her after she failed to return from a shopping trip, the police left him with two horrible but equally plausible explanations; one, she was the victim of a known serial killer, or two, she had intentionally left him.
Three years later, his personal life in a shambles and repentant for being such a terrible husband, the case remained unsolved. David clung to a shred of hope that she could still be alive, but only a miracle could bring Courtney back.
The infant son of European Royals was kidnapped. They received no ransom note, no leads, and had no idea what became of him. The world soon gave up hope that the prince would ever be found, but the king and queen never gave up. Their unrelenting quest for their son transformed their lives.
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Like the prince, you are being pursued by someone who has never given up hope of getting you back. Even if you are an identical twin, there is none other like you. No one can do what you were created to do. No one can take the position that was prepared for you to fill. If you don’t fill it, it will remain vacant for eternity. It’s a place in the king’s heart that’s empty. It hurts Him. He can’t ignore it, and He won’t give up His pursuit until He has you back.
During the Cold War, the CIA and the KGB both had psychic weapons research programs. After investing millions, the US shut down their Stargate Project in 1995, concluding that the results were unreliable. They assumed that the Russians would reach the same conclusion about their psychic research, but that was before the bizarre attacks started.
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Then, a defecting Russian spy confirmed, not only the weapon’s existence but also its imminent use in a massive preemptive strike against the United States. The current administration in Washington played down such a fantastic threat, fearing release of the information would create a panic and cause a political backlash.
It was a Senate Intelligence Committee member who got Pastor Will Lyons involved with the CIA. The Committee member told them Will understood the spiritual realm and might be able to help them.
He agreed only because he believed it was his duty to serve his country, but that was before he was given a security clearance and briefed on all of the details. How could he have known his decision to help would ultimately make him a target of his own government.
They look like us, but their DNA is clearly different. The question is; where did they come from and why are they drilling into the Dead Sea under the guise of a multinational geothermal project? And even stranger, why did they name it the Tartarus Project? Tartarus is name the Apostle Peter used for hell.
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Brian and Margret Porter have proof of their existence and they have a code which might be the key to their defeat. Can they survive long enough to break the code and convince others of the threat? Each day, as the Dead Sea drilling goes deeper, the threat against mankind grows greater. Sightings is a Christian thriller. Once you start, you need to hang on because the protagonist’s lives become a panic-stricken nightmare, scratching and clawing its way to a conclusion. Writer, Dan Walsh said Sightings rivals Frank Peretti’s early work. But the real story of Sightings goes beyond the suspense. It’s a spiritual journey.
Jack Drachman wondered what the people who followed the Barlow Road in covered wagons to settle the west would think about him using it to escape. They came with great expectations, pursuing their dreams. They established communities that became cities. More people came, hungry for success, willing to sacrifice anything to get it. What would those early travelers make of someone going the opposite direction now?
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Fleeing the very culture they worked so hard to establish? Could they see what had gone wrong and explain it to him? Was this present decline of America a mere bump in the road or something more?
Jack saw two possible explanations. One; civilization was declining as it had at times in the past and chaos would ensue, or two; these things were signs of the end. The first could happen without the second, but if the second happened, the first would happen simultaneously. He didn’t know which it was, but Jesus said there would be definite signs, and His advice about getting out of Dodge seemed to apply no matter which scenario it was.
You’ve heard of One World Government, The New Green Deal, The Great Reset, and perhaps, The Fourth Industrial Revolution. They’re schemes to reorganize the world and deliver it from perceived disaster. Certain thought leaders and groups believe that mankind is doomed to destruction…
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Jaidon and Morgan Wolfe are a liability to the architects of this new world order because Jaidon’s archeologist grandfather left him a diary with an encoded message that could stop their plan. What did Grandpa Mordi see in Iraq that has the operatives so alarmed? A weapon? Something extraterrestrial? Or something never conceived of before? Once Jaidon and Morgan find out what it was, the rich and powerful will stop at nothing to shut them up.
Tell me about my mother, Jezerae, again,” Raphael asked me.
We talked about her when we did our man trips. It might have been a horseback ride in the country, or a fishing trip, but she was a constant topic along with stories he’d heard about me. Tales about me were told with humor and joking, but the discussions about her were always serious. When his tone changed, I knew what he was about to ask.
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I think he was rebuilding a part of his life that had been stolen by Cuda Khan.
“Your mother was a very beautiful woman, you know. Every young man in the colony admired her—”
“—but she married you!”
“We gave our hearts to each other, yes.”
“Is that the same as being married?”
We would have been married the next day, but what was the point in sharing that with him? It never happened because Khan kidnapped Jezerae.
“Beyond her beauty, she was a strong woman as well” I told him. “Never intimidated by men. In fact, she was stronger than most men.”
“But not stronger than you.”
“Well…maybe in some ways she was stronger than me, just like your mom, Volva, is stronger than me in some ways.”
“But my mother, Jezerae died…”
Whenever we came to that point, he choked up and so did I.
“Yes, she did, Raphael. But she died in the most courageous way any person can die.”
At that point in the conversation, he looked at me in hungry anticipation of the answer. Even though he knew what I was about to say, he wanted to hear it again.
“A person can have no greater love than to lay down their life for their friend, and that’s what your mother did. She sacrificed herself to protect me and other people.”
Awestricken, he usually nodded in solemn agreement when I got to that part.
I didn’t know if what I told him was exactly right. They were only the facts I’d been able to gather. However, until someone proved me wrong, there was no way I would ever tell him different.
Edward had never met a woman like Prittesse who was more interested in him as a person than she was in his designated function as a provider of female needs. Up to that time, his life had been an endless torment of empty liaisons with women who could kill him without consequence, should he displease them in slightest way.
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Prittesse’s unconventional approach started Edward’s rites of passage into “manhood,” a banished concept, punishable by death in their upside-down society.
Sleeping in Trees explores the beginnings of romance, in a culture that has outlawed love; manhood, in a civilization that has neutered most of its males; and femininity, in a world of female chauvinism. The story’s social commentary edge is honed by Edward and Prittesse’s perilous escape into the beast-ridden wilderness, pursuing the lost ideal of love.
An approaching summer storm whipped up a dust cloud on the road to Nadara. Soon a brief rain shower left a pitted, muddy covering over the thick blanket of dust. The sun came out and dried the mud to a crust, awaiting the cartwheels of the first peddler heading for the little Italian town. By the following day, the entire road was ground into deep dust again.
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The cycle was not unlike the lives of the people who inhabited the isolated community. For generations, the base elements of the earth had taken on life, only to return to dust again. But even in the ordinary constancy of people’s lives, the extraordinary is known to happen.
After the war, Mario left the graves of his wife and children in Nadara and fled to the United States. Through many difficult life lessons, he was destined to learn that what was intended for evil God works for good.
Neither makeup nor stage presence could hide the news commentator’s pale ghostly appearance as he struggled to get his words out.
“Earlier in the week I told you that, Xiao, the rogue star will miss the Earth.”
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He paused, blinking into the camera. “But now we have this special bulletin just in.”
Moisture appeared in his eyes. “The latest calculations show that a cosmic vortex, caused by the passing star’s gravitational field, will displace our entire solar system.” He swallowed hard, clearly wrought with emotion. “Scientist’s have concluded that we have…six months to live.”
Three couples, thrown together by fate and entangled in a quest to live through the meltdown of society, discover that one of them has the answer that will enable them to survive.
When American missionaries first visited Mindoro Island, The Philippines in the early 1950s, they found forty-five thousand indigenous people waiting for them. The Mangyan people believed from dreams, visions, and divine visitations that “a strange-looking people” would come…
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…bringing a “big black book” from which to teach them a new way of life. (Catherine L. Davis, The Spirits of Mindoro, Monarch Books,1998)
In 1978, anthropologists discovered the Tau’t Batu (Cave People), living in an inaccessible remote basin in the Philippines. The Cave People had no contact with humans outside of their valley before that time. The idea that any group of people could remain geographically and culturally isolated from the rest of the world into the late Twentieth Century is remarkable.
What do these seemingly unrelated facts have to do with the story you are about to read? Both are historical anchors for the story of Alouda.