CFBA Blog Tours For July 2008

Visit our CFBA Blog each week to learn about the authors, read first chapters, and visit participating blogs.

She's the last of five sisters to find true love. So, when Elle Garvey's wide receiver-turned-pastor boyfriend, Jeremiah Franklin, proposes, she answers ,"Yes." But the engagement comes with unexpected sacrifices. Elle’s life purpose and calling is challenged. She stays behind in Beaufort, South Carolina to plan the wedding and sell her beloved art gallery as doubt shadows her engagement decision. Meanwhile, New York lawyer Heath McCord needs a change of scenery and moves with his young daughter to the low-country with dreams starting over and writing a novel. As Heath renews his hope and heart, Elle's life begins to unravel. Crushed when Jeremiah ends their engagement, she heals morning by morning, praying in a dilapidated chapel, searching for passion and purpose. In the midst of crisis, God’s love ignites her heart, and as her friendship with Heath blooms into love, Elle understands beauty always rises from the ashes.

She locked up the vision like a monster in her mind's maze, but it lurked there, on The Edge of Recall. Tessa Young is a landscape architect who specializes in the design and creation of labyrinths. For years she has immersed herself in the healing aspects of these elaborate structures, searching for God and hoping to make sense of the nightmares that have plagued her since childhood. When Smith Chandler, a colleague who once betrayed her, offers an opportunity to reconstruct a remarkable Colonial-era labyrinth, she can't resist this project of a lifetime. But one evening, as dusk falls, an assailant ambushes Tessa and Smith and the real nightmare begins.

Desperate to forget what happened to him in Iraq, Tyler Perkins flees to the emptiness of Wyoming. He's here to escape and also to fulfill a long-ago promise by accompanying his 86-year-old friend Soren Andeman on a fly-fishing trip—once more for old time's sake. But their trek to an idyllic trout lake soon becomes something more deeply harrowing—a journey that uncovers long-held lies, deadly crimes, and the buried secrets of the past. Ty barely has time to contemplate the question of what constitutes justice when nature unleashes her own revenge. Trapped in a race back to safety, he must face his own guilt-ridden past or risk being consumed. Powerfully imagined by the acclaimed author of In High Places, Wind River is an engaging wilderness adventure that explores the power of confession, the beauty of forgiveness, and the freedom of truth unveiled.

July 14th - 16th

Two midlife mamas hop over to jolly ole England and encounter so much more than the usual tourist stops. Liz does have a bit of a childhood crush on Big Ben, and she has hoped to “meet” him ever since her fifteenth birthday. Kellie dreams of starting an interior design business and figures Liz needs to be a part of that equation–a calculation that hasn’t added up for Liz yet. Nothing on the excursion goes the way these two friends had envisioned. They start with a village pancake race and end up being held for questioning on The Underground. Kellie and Liz take a wild tour through the land of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien and then find themselves swept up, up, and away in a hot air balloon over the Cotswalds. London beckons with the Tower of London, Windsor Castle, shopping at Portabella Road in Knotting Hill, and of course, reservations at the Ritz for a posh high tea.

July 16th - 18th
 

Ty Buchanan is living on the peaceful grounds of St. Monica’s, far away from the glamorous life he led as a rising trial lawyer for a big L.A. firm. Recovering from the death of his fiancée and a false accusation of murder, Buchanan has found his previous ambitions unrewarding. Now he prefers offering legal services to the poor and the underrepresented from his “office” at local coffee bar. One of his first clients is a mysterious woman being illegally evicted from a downtown transient hotel, an interest that Ty soon discovers is represented by his old law firm and his former best friend. Buchanan won’t back down. He’s going to fight for the woman’s rights. But then she ends up dead. Determined to find the killer, Buchanan finds he must depend on skills he never needed in the employ of a civil law firm. But somebody wants Buchanan to shut up. For good. Now he must use every legal and physical edge he knows to keep himself alive.

July 21st - 23rd

Raelene Strattford believes God has forsaken her, but her neighbor proves just the opposite while giving her a voice in a world where women have none. -- Has God forsaken Raelene? What kind of God would take a girl's family and leave her alone in a wild land where women have no voice? When Gustaf Hanssen promises Raelene's dying father that he will take care of her, he finds himself bound to her happiness, her success, and her well-being in ways he never imagined. To keep his word, must Gustaf really oversee all of Raelene's affairs, find her a husband, and maintain her farm, while she does nothing but scorn him? Can God reach through Raelene's pain and self-centeredness and give her the love that awaits, if only she will accept His will?

Gaylen Syler-Boatwright flees her unraveling marriage to take refuge in a mountain cottage owned by her deceased aunt. Burdened with looking after her adult sister, Delia, she is shocked to find a trail of family secrets hidden within her aunt’s odd collection of framed, painted dresses. With Delia, who attracts trouble as a daily occupation, Gaylen embarks on a road trip that throws the unlikely pair together on a journey to painful understanding and delightful revelations. Steeped in Hickman’s trademark humor, her spare writing voice, and the bittersweet pathos of the South, Painted Dresses powerfully captures a woman’s desperate longing to uncover a hidden, broken life and discover the liberty of living authentically, even when the things exposed are shrouded in shame.

The intrigue and passion of The Falcon and the Sparrow will leave you breathless. Follow the trail of Dominique Dawson, a reluctant spy who is forced to betray England or never see her brother again. As she takes a position as the governess of a Rear Admiral's son, her real mission is to gather intelligence information for Napoleon. Chase Randal, irresistibly drawn to his son's new governess, reluctantly allows the attraction to grow. Is there a future for the spy and the rear admiral? Or will Dominique's deception crush any prospect of a lasting happiness?

The fantastic land of Amara is recovering from years of war, and the Amarans’ faith has been rekindled. With Kale and her father busily serving as dragon keepers for Paladin, the dragon populace has exploded—and Kale has little time to develop her skills as a light wizard. Despite his recent physical limitations, Bardon has become a leader, serving on the governing board under Paladin. It’s a peaceful and exciting time of rebuilding. And yet a deadly, unseen evil lurks just beneath the surface of the idyllic land. When Kale and Bardon set aside their daily responsibilities for a quest to find a hidden meech dragon colony, they encounter insidious forces determined to destroy all they hold dear. Their world is under attack by a hidden enemy, and they realize truth has never been more important or so difficult to discern. Now with this stunning, beautifully crafted conclusion to Donita K. Paul’s popular DragonKeepers fantasy series, her many loyal readers will experience breathtaking adventure and mind-blowing fantasy as never before.