CrossReads Book Spotlight: A Different Kind of War 9/28/2023

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CrossReads Book Spotlight

CrossReads Book Spotlight

A Different Kind of War

(War of the Heart Book 1)

by Jennifer Purcell

A Different Kind of War

The war isn’t over for everyone. Will these two weary hearts ever find peace?

After Marjorie Willoughby lost her father and brother in battle and her mother to a fever, she cobbled together a new family. But a lingering debt endangers their future.

Gregory Cartwright’s Union allegiance and pacifist beliefs forced him to leave his home, and now he’s looking for a fresh start among his fellow Unionists in Bradford, Georgia. But first he needs a piece of land.

When Gregory approaches Marjorie with a possible solution that benefits them both, the two find they have more in common than they first thought. But then Gregory makes a decision that threatens to upend Marjorie’s world once again. Will Gregory be able to make up for his mistakes, or is this a battle he’s destined to lose?

If you love small towns and heartwarming romances that don’t shy away from real-life struggles, then you’ll love A Different Kind of War.

Buy this post-Civil War romance today!

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CrossReads Short Takes: HOW TO IDENTIFY WITCHCRAFT ATTACKS IN DREAMS & The Movement of Crowns Series 9/27/2023

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CrossReads Short Takes

HOW TO IDENTIFY WITCHCRAFT ATTACKS IN DREAMS

Exposing and destroying evil works of the Enemy

(Dealing with witchcraft Book 2)

by Jeffrey Okaekwu

HOW TO IDENTIFY WITCHCRAFT ATTACKS IN DREAMS

When men slept, the enemy came and sowed tares
The operations of witchcraft are everywhere; eating deep into the lives of people, and causing pain in homes and marriages.
Statistics show that witchcraft activities can easily be identified in most African countries because of the way most witches display their spiritual practice openly than in most western worlds where you will have witches as neighbors or as bosses and as coworkers without seeing any sign of such practice in them.
Many people are suffering from the attacks and manipulations of witchcraft in their lives, homes, and marriages.
One thing is certain and that is no matter how the operation of a witch or wizard is hidden from you, the spirit realm will always reveal it and this revelation is what comes to so many people’s dreams who are the victims without knowing the information that God wants to pass across to them.

This book explains the following
a) Why do people dream and don’t remember on waking up
b) How witchcraft manipulations occur in the dream
c) Some common witchcraft attacks in the dream and interpretations
c) Why people are served food in their dream and what is the makeup of such foods
d) How to identify the witch or wizard even when he/ she uses someone’s face to appear in their dream
e) How to overpower a witch and put an end to her evil attacks in your dream
f) Understand their time of operations, activation time of their spell, and how to alter it to work against them

Additional:
g) How to carry out self-deliverance to purge witchcraft and evil deposits in your life through dreams

h) Some practical ways to flush out those deposits from your body

Get a copy of the kindle version by clicking on the buy button or place an order for the paperback version.
Enlighten your family and loved ones with this.

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The Movement of Crowns Series

by Nadine C. Keels

The Movement of Crowns Series

Even after devastation, all is not lost.

The Movement of Crowns: the chronicle of an indomitable princess

The kingdom of Diachona is on the threshold of war. As Princess Constance is coming into power, she suspects that her growing love for one Commander Alexander may be ill-timed—especially if this is the end of the kingdom as they know it…

The Movement of Rings: the chronicle of a beautiful prankster

Unrest is spreading across the Mundayne empire, where Naona is a spirited imperial servant. In the midst of national turmoil, how might Naona’s heart survive intact—even enough for a chance at love with a foreign man?

The Movement of Kings: the chronicle of an untried monarch

The young ruler of the Eubeltic Realm is faced with domestic and colonial crises, the bereavement of his family, and his curious attraction to a councilman’s modest daughter. Could everything in the king’s untried hands be on the verge of falling apart?

While this historical fantasy series does not have magical elements, the stories are set in a completely fictional world

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Faith, Patriots, Grandfathers 9/26/2023

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by Suzanne D. Williams

BRAVERY never dies. Those who have fought and gone on before will forever be thought courageous. Whether the battle was won or lost, to the soldier who stood in the midst of it, we ascribe honor. Blood never dies. Though it may have sunk into the soil, may have dried and passed away over time, the running of it, that which caused it to flow, remains in our thinking. 

Memories remain. Though we fight with them, raise them or lower them, the essence of those moments replays within us. We see ourselves there, theirselves there, and the weather and the emotion continues in our chest. We pass by that location and what it was, it is again, and we’re lost for a moment in it. Those we’ve loved, replay in our minds. Their actions, their choices, their words. Greater still, those words have the power to change, to mend and heal, to steal and destroy. In our remembering of them, we can dwell there and find solace or pain. 

And to God in us, God with us, these hold a higher worth. Not to that which was broken, to what was misspoken, to the sin which crept in. Those are forgiven, melted away. But in the prayers of our forefathers, in their commitments, their faith, patriots, grandfathers, grandmothers, freed men, soldiers north and south, to those united when it ended, those who came from places far away, what seems vanished and gone with time’s rapid pace is as fresh in the ears of Jehovah as the moment these spake. He not only remembers the people, but He hears the words and will not turn aside. What He intended this place to be, what the people cried out to Him for, He holds up still until it comes to fulfillment.

Think of Isaiah, a prophet died thousands of years ago, yet many words he spoke still must come to fruition. Or to John, who saw Christ’s revelation on the isle of Patmos. He wrote the future as God laid it out, and we wait to see it come to pass and with it, God’s complete triumph. So, too, are covenants written over a land, which was unpossessed yet, and worship given on the shores, both east and west, and wars fought which the devil meant to divide us, drawing a line across a country on which God abides.

We see the chaos, the turmoil. We hear men’s evil words. We see their actions, their deceptions, and pray our own prayers, make our own declarations. We hold to the Bible’s promises to kings and the blessings we are promised for repentance from our wicked ways. And God who formed this nation, who shone His light across her mountains’ majesty, cradles in His loving hands, her past, her present, and her future, never altering one measure of it. As He is the same for all ages, so are we. He doesn’t rescind His callings. Even Israel, when carried away to Babylon, was promised freedom when the years had released. And God raised up Cyrus to fund their passage, then rebuilt the city and the temple. He dropped His truth in the hearts of the priest, Ezra, and the builder, Nehemiah. He surrounded them with willing men who carried a sword in one hand and building materials in the other.

Because deep in the soil lay the anointing of the people’s prayers, of victories won, of altars built. Of patriarchs and prophets’ declarations. And the Spirit who filled the tabernacle, who hovered over the mercy seat, who dwelt in the Holy of Holies, and gave visions of heaven to ordinary men, never lifted from His purpose, never altered from what had been promised to that land.

He remains here with us now. Our doubts blind us to Him, our hateful words clog our ears to His voice, but played within Him on repeat are those of hundreds, thousands, who heard His voice and did His will to give us what we have. There atop the mountain, there atop presidents’ faces, rests a throne, and He who sits upon it, wears a kingly robe and a glittering crown. For the people, that this republic and any people like her, will not perish from this earth. But He holds a scepter here, so that this King, which is alive and well, will honor we, which remain, with the answer that those who went ahead of us petitioned heaven for.

About The Author: 

Suzanne WilliamsBest-selling author, Suzanne D. Williams, is a native Floridian, wife, mother, and photographer. She is the author of both nonfiction and fiction books. 

 

www.feelgoodromance.com  

www.suzannedwilliams.com  

Facebook – suzannedwilliamsauthor   

Twitter – @SDWAuthor. 

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CrossReads Weekly Devotional: Faith’s Checkbook: The Life-Giving Stream 9/25/2023

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FaithsCheckbook

by C. H. Spurgeon

And it shall come to pass, that every thing that liveth, which moveth, whithersoever the rivers shall come, shall live”   (Ezekiel 47:9).

The living waters, in the prophet’s vision, flowed into the Dead Sea and carried life with them, even into that stagnant lake. Where grace goes, spiritual life is the immediate and the everlasting consequence. Grace proceeds sovereignly according to the will of God, even as a river in all its windings follows its own sweet will; and wherever it comes it does not wait for life to come to it, but it creates life by its own quickening flow. Oh, that it would pour along our streets and flood our slums! Oh, that it would now come into my house and rise till every chamber were made to swim with it! LORD, let the living water flow to my family and my friends, and let it not pass me by. I hope I have drunk of it already; but I desire to bathe in it, yea, to swim in it. O my Savior, I need life more abundantly. Come to me, I pray Thee, till every part of my nature is vividly energetic and intensely active. Living God, I pray Thee, fill me with Thine own life. I am a poor, dry stick; come and make me so to live that, like Aaron’s rod, I may bud and blossom and bring forth fruit unto Thy glory. Quicken me, for the sake of my LORD Jesus. Amen
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Love as a Verb 9/22/2023

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by Staci Stallings

One of my most popular series is called The Courage Series (To Protect & Serve, White Knight, and For Real). The Courage Series revolves around a firefighter who becomes kind of the center-pin for a whole group of friends.  In the course of the three novels, the characters again and again face situations that call for great courage.

However, many times when we think of courage, we tend to think of dangerous situations–fires, wrecks, etc.  There are certainly enough of those portrayed in the three books, but I think by the third one (For Real) we begin to see a different kind of courage called for–the courage to love with your whole heart, to be “all in” with someone and to love no matter what.

That’s a tough one because most of us have learned the art of loving when it’s convenient, when it’s easy.  We have friends who seem great until we need something, and then they disappear.  “Fair-weather” friends.  But this series really points out that real friends aren’t just there when things are good.  Real friends are there particularly when things get rough.

When life keeps throwing curveballs meant to take you out, that’s when you need friends the most–and when you, as a friend, need to be there for others the most.  This is really hard, and it requires having a verb kind of love, not just a noun kind of love.

See, the noun kind of love is all hearts and flowers and champagne.  It’s going out to party together, celebrating, having fun.  But the verb kind of love is the part that happens after the end of the movie.  The part you have to step into when he loses his job or she loses her health.

It’s the part that society doesn’t like to focus on–the being there for someone when the chips are down and they have been stomped on by this thing called life.  It’s showing up when someone close to them has died and being willing to be there, with them, through the trials and the tears, through the heartache and the healing.  That’s the verb kind of love, and it takes immense courage.

It’s the kind of courage that The Courage Series is ultimately about.  Having the courage to live love, to be love, to give love–when it’s easy, and when doing so might just tear your heart right out.

I think the challenge of this series is first to show the reader what the verb kind of love is, what it looks like with this set of friends, and then it challenges you to live the verb kind of love.  The question is:  Do you have the courage that will take?

To Protect and to Serve

About the Author:

Staci StallingsA stay-at-home mom with a husband, three kids and a writing addiction on the side, Staci Stallings has numerous titles for readers to choose from. Not content to stay in one genre and write it to death, Staci’s stories run the gamut from young adult to adult, from motivational and inspirational to full-out Christian and back again. Every title is a new adventure! That’s what keeps Staci writing and you reading. Although she lives in Amarillo, Texas and her main career right now is her family, Staci touches the lives of people across the globe with her various Internet and writing endeavors.

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CrossReads Book Spotlight: Wooing Gertrude 9/21/2023

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CrossReads Book Spotlight

CrossReads Book Spotlight

Wooing Gertrude

(Burrton Springs Brides)

by Jodie Wolfe

Wooing Gertrude

Enoch Valentine has given up finding peace for his past mistakes. He throws everything he has into being the new part-time deputy in Burrton Springs, Kansas while maintaining the foreman position at a local horse ranch. But when trouble stirs on the ranch, he questions whether he’ s the right man for either job.

Peace has been elusive for most of Gertrude Miller’ s life, especially under the oppressiveness of an overbearing mother. She takes matters into her own hands and sends for a potential husband, while also opening her own dress shop. Gertrude hopes to build a future where she’ ll find peace and happiness.

Will either of them ever be able to find peace?

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CrossReads Short Takes: A Chance for Nora & I know What I Love You Means 9/20/2023

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CrossReads Short Takes

A Chance for Nora

Last Chance Brides Book 36

by Joi Copeland

A Chance for Nora

Will the prodigal son make amends with his loved ones and find a happily ever after for himself in the town of Last Chance, Nebraska?

With the death of her mother, Nora Silverthorne finds herself longing for the only family she now has left, a half-sister she’s never met. Upon arriving in Last Chance, Nebraska, Nora struggles with the handsome stranger who greets her with shotgun in hand.

Nora’s guarded her heart for years against men and their conniving ways. She’s not looking for a husband, but the man intrigues her, putting her heart at risk, and possibly hindering her from connecting with her newfound sister.

Kingsley Jones ran away from home years ago, pushing away the only father he’d ever known, and in the process, cutting ties with his mother and brother. Finally on the road to becoming the man God intended him to be, he winds up staying with his cousin until he can get his own business off the ground.

When he meets the beautiful Nora Silverthorne, Kingsley’s world is threatened. Believing he’s unworthy of happiness due to the pain he caused his family, he pushes her away, knowing it’s only a matter of time before he hurts her as well.

Will Last Chance be Kingsley’s hope of redeeming himself? Will he allow himself to find love in the process?

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I Know What I Love You Means

A Contemporary Christian Romance Novel

(The Love Series Book 1)

by Staci Stallings

I know What I Love

Abby Fletcher is in no position to date anyone. She’s not looking. She’s not in the market. She hasn’t been on a date in… well… it’s been a while. Content with her job as a school counselor, she likes the small town life she has carved out for herself. Quiet and unassuming, she is the perfect wall flower in society. But when a handsome stranger from the big city shows up, her world might take a turn she’s not ready to make.

Pete Caradon has seen it all. Twelve years as an NYPD detective has given him plenty of reasons to condemn humanity as irredeemable. When a case suddenly comes to an ugly end, Pete finds himself the one being investigated. His partner suggests a small vacation while things are being sorted out, and Pete reluctantly heads to his estranged brother’s house in search of a little peace and sanity. Instead, he may find his world has only just begun to spin in a new direction.

The Love Series by Best-Selling Christian Romance author, Staci Stallings explores the on-going trauma those who have experienced domestic violence in their younger years go through. Somewhere between trying to forget and trying to move on, these characters will give readers insight into how pervasively difficult it is to put the past in the past and leave it there. In the end, love wins, but the process to getting there isn’t always easy or straight forward.

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Faith’s Checkbook: Like Palm and Cedar 9/19/2023

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FaithsCheckbook

by C. H. Spurgeon

“The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree: he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon”   (Psalm 92:12)

These trees are not trained and pruned by man: palms and cedars are “trees of the LORD,” and it is by His care that they flourish. Even so it is with the saints of the LORD: they are His own care. These trees are evergreen and are beautiful objects at all seasons of the year. Believers are not sometimes holy and sometimes ungodly: they stand in the beauty of the LORD under all weathers. Everywhere these trees are noteworthy: no one can gaze upon a landscape in which there are either palms or cedars without his attention being fixed upon these royal growths. The followers of Jesus are the observed of all observers: like a city set on a hill, they cannot be hid. The child of God flourishes like a palm tree, which pushes all its strength upward in one erect column without a single branch. It is a pillar with a glorious capital. It has no growth to the right or to the left but sends all its force heavenward and bears its fruit as near the sky as possible. LORD, fulfill this type in me. The cedar braves all storms and grows near the eternal snows, the LORD Himself filling it with a sap which keeps its heart warm and its bough strong. LORD, so let it be with me, I pray Thee. Amen

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CrossReads Weekly Devotional: Gems from Pastor Jim 9/18/2023

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by Jim Hughes 

CrossMatt. 25:10 “But while they were gone to buy oil, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was locked.”

If you know the story, you know that there were 10 bridesmaids who were invited to the wedding feast. Half of them came prepared and had enough oil for their lamps and five didn’t. When the groom showed up those who did not have enough oil had to go and buy some while the others went to the wedding feast. When those who had to go buy oil arrived, it was too late. They were locked out of the feast and could not enter.

The Lord invites everyone to come to His wedding feast. His arrival is guaranteed and set in heaven. He commands us to be ready at all times, since we don’t know when the time of His arrival is. Some think they have it all figured out, but they don’t. We are told it’s not for us to know; we are just to be ready because it will happen when we least expect it.

Most people who profess to know the Lord do not appear to be ready at all. They go about their business with little concern that the Lord may come for them at any moment. Their faith plays a small role in their lives. They spend their time and energy on pursuing the things in this life. They do not consider church involvement that big of a deal. They generally are pretty soft on sin.

We may or may not be alive when the Lord returns. No one knows when their life on earth will come to an end. We assume that we will live a long time, but so many don’t. Death is no respecter of persons or age. Death is but one breath away for any of us. If death were to come knocking on your door today, can you honestly say that you are ready to meet up with God? Are you dreading having to stand before Him and give an account for your life?

Don’t be foolish and wait to get ready to meet the Lord. The door of opportunity may soon pass you by and then it will be too late. Today is the day of salvation; seize it while you can.

About the Author:

Jim Hughes

 

Spending his formative years in Ft. Wayne, IN, Jim followed the love of his life to southeast Iowa where they married and have spent the majority of their lives. Jim has pastored several churches throughout his life and has worked many years in local factories to help support his family. The father of two married adult children and one son still at home, Jim is a first-time author.

C Through Marriage came into being through many years of pastoral and life experiences. The book first took on a life of its own over 20 years ago when I sought to address the much publicized moral failures of prominent leaders in the church. In the chapter on Chasity, I include the guideliness that I developed then to protect one’s self from such failures.

I am a firm believer in order to make sense out of life you have to use much common sense. We need to get back to the basics of what has worked for many, many generations. If is isn’t broke, why try to fix it? I strive to return to the basics of what really works in all my writings.

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I’m Never Doing That Again 9/15/2023

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by Staci Stallings

Let me be honest up-front. I don’t do deadlines.

I’ve known this about myself for… well, my whole writing “career.”

The thing is, I’m a journalist by trade, so you would think that deadlines would come naturally to me. Oh, how I remember the nights at the paper when I was a campus reporter, pounding out 16-inches of copy because they were going to put the paper “to bed” in 20 minutes, and there was no other choice.

Even back then, my stories, if I had any say in the matter at all, were in two days before deadline. I don’t like the adrenaline and sheer panic of writing on deadline.  I don’t like how focused you have to be to get something down and get it shaped into something worth reading on deadline.

I much prefer to have whatever it is FINISHED well before whatever “deadline” is imposed.

So why did I not have my last series finished before I published the first one last May?

Good question.

Okay, in my defense, when I put “Mirror Mirror” up for pre-order in February, a year seemed doable to finish the very last book in the series.  I only had one more to write. I should be safe. Or so I thought.

So I put that one out and started writing on the fourth book—Raising Attabury.

It quickly became apparent that Attabury was not going to cooperate. For one thing, there was no way I could just start on Eric and Dani’s story without filling in some major plot points of how we got from Book 3 to Attabury.

Doggedly because I had a deadline, I kept at it, figuring I would just do a short “prologue” about what happened in the between time and move on. Yeah. That didn’t work like I thought it would.

218 pages later… I finally got to Eric and Dani’s story.  And it was OCTOBER!

Now, that wasn’t my fault.

In the meantime, I had written two other books I had not planned to write at all!

So, here we are in October with what amounted to a novel of prologue story, and I had just started Attabury. Turns out, I put the bridge book out as “A Moment Like This” in December and all seemed back on track.  Except I did not have Attabury finished.

Here is the place I’m saying, “I’m never doing that again!” Because as I was writing Attabury, I was also:

* Running to basketball games two and three times a week with middle daughter. Senior year, don’t you know. I couldn’t miss one!

* Going to band concerts, choir concerts, open house, and every other thing the school came up with for both kids.

* Teaching Sunday School

* Doing a newsletter

* Running two businesses—including all of the January tax stuff like 941’s, W-2’s, W-3, sales tax, etc.

* Normal running of two businesses.

* Oh, did I mention Christmas, New Years, and helping with two retreats?

* And, wouldn’t you know it, in the middle of all of it, I got sick!

So the February deadline that looked so doable last year, suddenly got to be a much bigger challenge than I had anticipated.

There’s a part of me that always wonders if God kind of does this on purpose just so I know for SURE AND CERTAIN that I did not do it!  Then I go back and read Attabury, and I KNOW I did not do it!

Not saying I won’t follow God’s lead from here on out because believe me, God’s way works, my way doesn’t.  But I’m really, really hoping I never have to do that again because I was definitely not cut out to write that way!

I do hope, my readers enjoy God’s story… because one thing’s for sure, I know I didn’t write that one!  And with that said, I now release “Raising Attabury.

Raising Attabury

About the Author

Staci StallingsA stay-at-home mom with a husband, three kids and a writing addiction on the side, Staci Stallings has numerous titles for readers to choose from. Not content to stay in one genre and write it to death, Staci’s stories run the gamut from young adult to adult, from motivational and inspirational to full-out Christian and back again. Every title is a new adventure! That’s what keeps Staci writing and you reading. Although she lives in Amarillo, Texas and her main career right now is her family, Staci touches the lives of people across the globe with her various Internet and writing endeavors.

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