Welcome to the Christian Fiction Scavenger Hunt!  If you’ve just discovered the hunt, be sure to start at Stop #1 and collect the clues through all the stops, in order, so you can enter to win one of our top five grand prizes!

• The hunt BEGINS on 11/7 at noon MST with Stop #1 at LisaTawnBergren.com.
• Hunt through our loop using Chrome or Firefox as your browser (NOT Explorer).
• There is no rush to complete the hunt–you have all weekend (until Sunday, 11/10 at midnight MST). So take your time, reading the unique posts along the way; our hope is that you discover new authors/new books and learn new things about them.
• Submit your entry for the grand prizes by collecting the CLUE on each author’s scavenger hunt post and submitting your answer in the Rafflecopter form at the final stop, back on Lisa’s site.  Many authors are offering additional prizes along the way!

And if you’ve never been on my site before, it’s nice to meet you!  I’m Angela Hunt (Angie to everyone but telephone solicitors) and I’ve been writing for over thirty years. Like Lisa in the first stop, I write in many different genres–children’s books, nonfiction, and fiction: historical fiction, contemporary fiction, and a few that fall between the cracks.

But I’m here to tell you about King’s Shadow, my latest release. It is the fourth book in The Silent Years series, which all take place in the Intertestamental Period–the 400 years between the Old and New Testaments. I wanted to write about this period because I knew next-to-nothing about it, and boy, is it fascinating! King’s Shadow is about Herod the Great, whose story takes us right up to the birth of Christ.

As a historical novelist, I have learned that no one is completely bad or completely good–with the exception of Jesus, of course. Herod is thought of as a mad murderer, and he was, but he was also a brilliant builder. You may have heard of Masada, that mountaintop fortress in the Holy Land. I had an occasion to visit the ruins of Herod’s palace at Masada while I was in college, and I remember standing in awe as our guide pointed out some beautifully inlaid tiles. “That was Herod’s bath,” the guide said.

Elevated view of cracked mosaic floor, Masada

I walked down to it, my imagination racing at the thought of standing where Herod once bathed . . . history felt real, almost as if I could reach through the years and touch the water that once flowed over that king’s skin. In the U.S., a country not even 250 years old, we don’t have an ancient history, and I wasn’t used to thinking in terms of thousands of years . . .

Here’s the synopsis of King’s Shadow: Two women occupy a place in Herod’s court. The first, Salome, is the king’s only sister, a resentful woman who has been told she is from an inferior race, a people God will never accept or approve. 

The second woman, Zara, is a lowly handmaid who serves Salome, but where Salome spies conspiracies and treachery, Zara sees hurting people in need of understanding and compassion. 

Powerful and powerless, Idumean and Jew, selfish and selfless–both women struggle to reach their goals and survive in Herod the Great’s tumultuous court, where no one is trustworthy and no one is safe.

I hope you’ll enjoy the story, where Herod once again comes alive . . . but, thankfully, I didn’t have to mention his bathtub.

HERE’S THE STOP #2 SKINNY: 

If you’re interested, you can order King’s Shadow on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, CBD, or at your local bookstore. 

Here’s the clue to write down:  fall

Link to Stop #3, the next stop on the Loop:  Carrie Stuart Parks’ site. 

But wait! Before you go, I’m offering a free book to any new folks who sign up for my VIP newsletter list (where you’ll receive advance notice of special deals and monthly giveaways). All you have to do is sign up at any of the “VIP insider boxes” on my website or Facebook page. You’ll receive a link to the free ebook after you sign up. 

Thanks for stopping by!  Happy hunting!

~~Angie