The Rosie Effect by Graeme Simsion

 The Rosie Effect
Author:  Graeme Simsion
Published:  October 2014
Publisher:  Harper Collins
Pages:  414
ISBN 9781443435901
General:  General Fiction
Source:  borrowed

Don Tillman and Rosie Jarman are back. If you were swept away by Graeme Simsion’s international smash hit The Rosie Project, you will love The Rosie Effect.

The Wife Project is complete, and Don and Rosie are happily married and living in New York. But they’re about to face a new challenge.

Rosie is pregnant.

Don sets about learning the protocols of becoming a father, but his unusual research style gets him into trouble with the law. Fortunately his best friend Gene is on hand to offer advice: he’s left Claudia and moved in with Don and Rosie.

As Don tries to schedule time for pregnancy research, getting Gene and Claudia back together, servicing the industrial refrigeration unit that occupies half his apartment, helping Dave the Baseball Fan save his business and staying on the right side of Lydia the social worker, he almost misses the biggest problem of all: he might lose Rosie when she needs him most.

Get ready for The Rosie Effect, the new hilarious and heart-wrenching romantic comedy of the year.

My thoughts:

Graeme Simsion has authored another entertaining romantic comedy in The Rosie Effect, the follow-up to the much loved The Rosie Project.  I adored The Rosie Project because I laughed so much throughout this endearing story about a brilliant man who was terribly socially inept.  He has OCD and is even, perhaps, slightly autistic and he is hilarious, though he's not trying to be. By the sixth page I was in tears - joyous tears of laughter.  I love it when a book can reach me that way.

Rosie and Don are an adorable couple who, like most any couple out there, fail to communicate what they need from each other in a manner that the other understands.  Don's mishaps as he is trying to prove himself are plausible and quite funny but I wouldn't say The Rosie Effect is as humorous as The Rosie Project. The Rosie Effect is a deeper exploration of the human condition and the dynamics of a married couple learning to communicate and to love and accept each other and themselves.

While The Rosie Effect is humorous, there's a lot more depth in Don's character as he discovers he is soon to be a father and doesn't know how to handle the news.  He endeavours to be supportive, learning all he can about pre-natal care and nutrition, purchasing the best and safest pram and crib he can.  But, despite his efforts, Rosie is unsure about Don's ability to bond with a child.  Don must examine himself and learn how to show he is emotionally available and save his marriage.

Gene, a professor of psychology and Don's best friend, is a surprise in this book!  In The Rosie Project he comes across as a bit of a sleaze (who am I kidding, a big sleaze) with no concern for how his behaviour affects his wife Claudia.  Fortunately in The Rosie Effect Gene has matured and we learn a bit more about this man as a friend and father as he plays an important supportive role in this story.

I love The Rosie Effect.  It offers a lot to the reader.  You will laugh, you may require a tissue or two, and you will likely become introspective in regards to your own relationships.  I may not have laughed as much as I did while reading The Rosie Project, but Simsion evokes more emotion at different levels with The Rosie Effect.  I'd venture to say his plot has matured along with his characters and that, my friends, is a good thing too.

Sensitive readers:  language/profanity warning

Meet the Author:

GRAEME SIMSION is an IT consultant and educator. He wrote The Rosie Project as a screenplay before turning it into his first novel. The screenplay won the Australian Writers Guild Inscription Award for Best Romantic Comedy Script in 2010 and then won the 2012 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Best Unpublished Manuscript. Follow him on twitter @GraemeSimsion.

Debut Mystery Release: Killer WASPs

Killer WASPs

A Killer WASPs Mystery

Amy Korman

Crime really stings in Killer WASPs (Witness Impulse e-book, on sale 9/16/2014, $1.99), a Witness Original from debut author Amy Korman. If you love cocktails, antiquing, parties, shopping and the occasional crime-lite thrown in amid vodka tonics and tennis matches at the club, then you’ll love Killer WASPs. The first installment in this modern and cozy series features crime, romance, and fun amid the classic estates of Philadelphia’s Main Line.

Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, is a haven for East Coast WASPs, where tennis tournaments and cocktails at the club are revered traditions. Little happens in the sleepy suburb, and that is the way the Lilly Pulitzer–clad residents prefer it. So when antiques store owner Kristin Clark and her portly basset hound stumble upon the area's newest real estate developer lying unconscious beneath the hydrangea bushes lining the driveway of one of Bryn Mawr's most distinguished estates, the entire town is abuzz with gossip and intrigue.

When the attacker strikes again just days later, Kristin and her three best friends—Holly, a glamorous chicken nugget heiress with a penchant for high fashion; Joe, a decorator who's determined to land his own HGTV show; and Bootsie, a preppy but nosy newspaper reporter—join forces to solve the crime. While their investigation takes them to cocktail parties, flea markets, and the country club, they must unravel the mystery before the assailant claims another victim.

Fans of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series will enjoy shaking up the Philadelphia Main Line. To learn more, check out the Killer WASPs Facebook page:https://www.facebook.com/killerWASPsseries.

About the Author: Amy Korman is a former senior editor and staff writer for Philadelphia Magazine, and author of Frommer’s Guide to Philadelphia. She has written for Town & Country, House Beautiful, Men’s Health, and Cosmopolitan. Killer WASPs is her first novel.

Purchase your copy here:  HarperCollins, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, iBooks

Excerpt From The Man in the Snow by Rory Clements

The Man in the Snow

Rory Clements

December 10, 2013

Witness Impulse

A Harper Collins Publishing Imprint

Electronic book text

FICTION / Crime

$0.99 US / $0.99 Can. / 0,73 € EU

A riveting novella set in Elizabethan England-perfect for fans of C. J. Sansom and The Tudors.

Just a few days before Christmas, a reluctant John Shakespeare-brother of a rising playwright-answers a plea for help from Joshua Peace, Searcher of the Dead, but he has no idea the kind of menace he will face. A naked man has been found in a snowdrift, a wreath of holly crowning his head and a bullet in his back.

As all around him prepare for the festive season, Shakespeare must unravel a complex plot of passion and treachery and confront a cold-blooded murderer who will not hesitate to kill again.

*I thank Harper Collins Publishing, Witness Impulse, for the following excerpt provided for this special posting for The Man in the Snow by Rory Clements.

2 JOHN MURRAY

Even the best riders would not manage the hundred-mile highway to Stratford-upon-Avon in such conditions. A letter would have to suffice and the courier would have to deliver it as and when he could.

Sitting back from the table, he looked at what he had written: news of the girls, Mary and Grace, both thriving in health and their lessons. He was about to move on to his adopted son, Andrew, when there was a knock at the door and Boltfoot Cooper limped into the room, his club- foot scraping across the rush-matted boards.

‘Mr Peace is here to see you, master.’

Peace? A visit from Joshua Peace was a rare event indeed. Rare, but most welcome. ‘Bring him in, Boltfoot, and ask Jane to fetch us brandy, if you would.’

He put down his quill and rubbed the wet ink from his hands on the rag he kept at the side of the table as Boltfoot ushered Peace in.

‘Well met, Joshua. Are you hail?’ Shakespeare took his old friend’s icy hand, then embraced him, struck by how gaunt and ill at ease he appeared.

‘As well as any of God’s creatures in this bleakest of winters, John. I swear the cold would freeze a man’s very soul.’

‘Well, take brandy with me. You will find some warmth there.’

Peace managed a faint smile. ‘Brandy indeed. Yes, that is what a man needs. If not to warm him, then at least to numb the pain in the long, dark nights.’

‘So have you come to cheer me up, to drink and make merry? Are we to go wassailing?’

‘You make jest of me.’ Peace took off his ice-coated felt hat and ran his hand across the smooth peak of his pate. His hair was nothing but a rim around the edges, a pauper’s crown. ‘Forgive me. It is getting to me.’

‘Then I shall have to cheer you. Let us trudge through the snow to the Old Swan and sink into mellow oblivion together.’

‘No, John. I have no temper for the company of strangers. Let them carouse without me. Work and sleep are my lot this season.’

Shakespeare’s maidservant, Jane, appeared with a salver holding a flagon of brandy and two goblets. He poured two large measures of the spirit and handed one to Peace.

‘Then what has brought you here?’

‘I have care of a corpse that I wish you to look at. In truth I am at a loss as to what to do with it.’

‘Is there foul play?’

‘Most certainly. The man has been shot in the back.’ ‘Then it must be a matter for the justice and the sheriff.’ ‘They are not interested.’

‘The justice is not interested in murder? In God’s

name, why not?’

‘The victim is an Ethiop. They presume him to be

either slave or deckhand from some foreign vessel. No one cares enough to inquire into his death. Anyway, they are all too preoccupied with the prospect of feasting.’

Shakespeare wished he were surprised by the reac- tion, but nonetheless murder was murder, whoever the victim. ‘How did he come to be entrusted to you?’

‘The watch brought him to me. They had no idea what to do with the body and said they did not want to bury a heathen in hallowed ground.’

‘A shameful business.’

‘Indeed it is. One of those who brought him to me suggested he was shot escaping, another that he hadn’t paid some quent merchant for use of his whore. Either way, they said, he had got his deserts.’

‘Drink your brandy, Joshua, and we will see.’

The stone walls of the crypt beneath St Paul’s dripped with water. The cacophonous sounds of teeming com- merce above were muted here. This was where Joshua Peace worked alone as Searcher of the Dead.

Shakespeare was a tall man and his long hair hung about his face as he stared down at the mound on the trestle table. It was covered in a stained sheet that had once been white. Peace pulled back the covering to reveal the corpse, which lay face down, showing the wound.

Even in death, the skin had a wonderful, dark sheen, its beauty cruelly marred by a hole in the middle of the back, just beneath the delicate arc of the shoulder blades.

‘Could his death have been an accident?’ Shakespeare asked.

‘Look more closely, John. See the scorch marks around the entry wound. That tells me he was shot at close range. Most likely with a dag. This was murder.’

‘A dag?’ It was not that easy to get hold of a wheel-lock pistol. Such weapons were costly. Shakespeare sniffed the air. ‘How long has he been dead?’

‘You notice the absence of stench.’

‘Which must mean the death is recent.’

‘No, not in this case. The body was found beneath a

drift of snow, somewhere close to Bishopsgate, just outside the city wall. It had frozen solid. The bitter cold has delayed putrefaction. In truth, I cannot give you a time of death, except to say that it occurred some time in the past three weeks, since the snows came.’

Shakespeare reached forward and touched the skin. It was so luminous and bright, he half expected it to be warm, but it was as cold as ice.

‘It still hasn’t thawed through, John. It was brought to me this morning, rigid. The blood is frozen in the veins. Let me turn him over for you and show you his face.’

Peace put his practised arms beneath the slender body and turned it over.

Shakespeare took a step back in shock and then came closer again, to be sure. It was a face he had not seen in almost ten years, but he was certain. ‘His name is Giovanni Jesu. He attends upon the Earl of Oxford. Attended ...’ he trailed off.

‘You know him, John?’

‘I met him once when the earl was engaged as a com- missioner at the trial of the Scottish Queen.’ He had been struck even then by the man’s remarkable beauty.

‘What was he? Servant?’

‘Difficult to say precisely. I know there was a scan- dal. The earl brought him back from his tour of the great Italian cities. Siena or Padua, I believe. No, no, it was Venice. That is where Giovanni came from. He must have been a youth then, barely out of childhood. They arrived in 1577 and he was about twenty-two when I met him, so that would make him thirty-one or thereabouts now. I think the earl was captivated by his exquisite skin and his perfect features. If he saw something beautiful, he collected it. Giovanni was like a diamond or pearl to him. There were others, of course ...’

Joshua Peace nodded. ‘Yes, I have heard of them. But what are we to do about this man?’

‘At least we have a name now.’

‘But that does not tell us why he is dead nor who killed him.’

‘The motive is, perhaps, the least of our problems. We also have troublesome connections.’ Shakespeare grimaced at the thought. The Earl of Oxford was always trouble. Most difficult of all was his link to the Cecils. He had been ward to Lord Burghley, and had married his daughter. The history of the Earl of Oxford and the Cecil family was as strained as a galleon’s sheets in an easterly gale. Yet even more difficult was his history with the Queen. One moment he was her favourite, the next he was banished. Shakespeare began to sift the possible political complications through his mind, and did not like the dangers he perceived.

Peace said nothing but walked through to the adjoining room, returning with a trencher. There was a circle of holly on it.

‘What is that, Joshua?’

‘The watch told me it was around our corpse’s head, like a coronet.’

‘An emblem of martyrdom. Christ’s crown of thorns.’

‘The possibility had occurred to me. Though what it might signify in this case, I have no idea.’

‘What clothes was he wearing?’

‘Nothing else. The body was naked. He had, however, been clothed when he was killed, for I found a fragment of woollen cloth in the wound.’

‘Show me.’

Peace held out the trencher with the holly crown to Shakespeare. A jagged piece of cloth shone at the side of the platter. It was small and dark with dried blood, but there was enough to show that it was of high quality, with a cross-weave of gold thread.

‘Thank you, Joshua. I have no idea what is to be done about this, but I will put my mind to it.’

As Shakespeare hastened through the icy streets towards the river, he thought back to his only meet- ing with Giovanni Jesu. It had been in an anteroom at Fotheringhay back in the year 1586. Shakespeare had been taken off his intelligence work to help Walsingham prepare his case against Mary Queen of Scots. His job was to safeguard and organise the mass of secret docu- ments from the Babington conspiracy that would be used to prove Mary’s guilt and lead to her death. It had been a menial, unpleasant task and Shakespeare had wished himself anywhere else, but he had nonetheless been irritated to be interrupted by a stranger who entered the room without knocking ...

Shakespeare looked up from the endless documents. The man was a blackamoor. ‘I am afraid this room has been taken over as Sir Francis’s private office. Who do you want?’

‘Edward ... the Earl of Oxford.’

‘Well, he is clearly not here.’

‘Do you know how long the commission will last?’

‘It will be finished soon enough.’

‘And so will the Scots Queen, yes?’

Shakespeare had looked at him sternly, hoping he

would go away.

But the man made a comment about the impossibility

of having two queens in one country, then added in his fluent but accented English, ‘In truth, sir, it is like having two wives in one bedchamber or kitchen, a thing that is always likely to lead to death.’

Shakespeare found himself laughing. ‘It would be wise, sir, to refrain from any more jests about the Queen or her cousin, unless you wish to join Mary on the block.’

‘If a jester can’t make jests, then who can?’

‘Are you a jester?’

The young man had shrugged. ‘Jester, bedfellow, curiosity, dog. People have called me all those and more.’ ‘Then what are you?’

‘I am Giovanni Jesu, a man.’

‘And I am exceedingly busy, so I would be grateful if you would please leave me to my work.’

Jesu had grinned, bowed very low and retreated from the room. It had been the only time they met, but Shakespeare had never forgotten the encounter. He thought now of the cruel holly crown and the corpse on Joshua’s slab. How had this vital, witty man come to this? 

Author Rory Clements

Excerpt From Innocent Blood by James Rollins and Rebecca Cantrell

I'd like to thank Harper Collins Publishing and the William Morrow division for this excerpt of the exciting second book in the Order of the Sanguine series by James Rollins. If you enjoy what you read, and I know you will, be sure to visit your local bookstore for a copy.

"In this riveting follow-up to The Blood Gospel, the first book in their thrilling and atmospheric Order of the Sanguine series, New York Times bestselling authors James Rollins and Rebecca Cantrell deliver a riveting tale of international adventure, intrigue, suspense, and supernatural mystery involving a modern scientist, a highly secret eternal spiritual order, and a terrifying power who must join forces to bring down a ruthless and cunning enemy and prevent the Apocalypse."

AUTHOR SOCIAL MEDIAOfficial Author Website: JamesRollins.com
Official Author Facebook: /sigmaforce

Official Author Twitter: @jamesrollins

On Sale: 12/10/2013

• FICTION : THRILLERS / GENERAL, ACTION & ADVENTURE
• Tr 9780061991066 $27.99 ($32.99)
• 448 pages; 6 x 9
• ISBN: 9780061991042
  
  

   1

December 18, 9:58 a.m. PST Palo Alto, California
An edge of panic kept her tense.
As Dr. Erin Granger entered the lecture hall on the Stanford campus, she glanced across its breadth to make sure she was alone. She even crouched and searched under the empty seats, making certain no one was hiding there. She kept one hand on the Glock 19 in her ankle holster.
It was a beautiful winter morning, the sun hanging in a crisp, cloud-studded blue sky. With bright light streaming through the tall windows, she had little to fear from the dark creatures that haunted her nightmares.
Still, after all that had befallen her, she knew that her fellow man was just as capable of evil.
Straightening again, she reached the lectern in front of the classroom and let out a quiet sigh of relief. She knew her fears were illogical, but that didn’t stop her from checking that the hall was safe before her students trooped in. As annoying as college kids could be, she would fight to the death to keep each one of them from harm.
She wouldn’t fail a student again.
Erin’s fingers tightened on the scuffed leather satchel in her hand. She had to force her fingers to open and place her bag next to the lectern. With her gaze still roaming the room, she unbuckled the satchel and pulled out her notes for the lecture. Usually she memorized her presentations, but she had taken over this class for a professor on maternity leave. it was an interesting topic, and it kept her from dwelling on the events that had upended her life, starting with the loss of her two graduate students in Israel a couple of months before.

Heinrich and Amy.
The German student had died from injuries sustained following an earthquake. Amy’s death had come later, murdered because Erin had unwittingly sent forbidden information to her student, knowledge that had gotten the young woman killed.
She rubbed her palms, as if trying to wipe away that blood, that responsibility. The room seemed suddenly colder. It couldn’t have been more than fifty degrees outside and not much warmer in the classroom. Still, the shivers that swept through her as she prepared her papers had nothing to do with the room’s poor heating system.
Returned again to Stanford, she should have felt good to be home, wrapped in the familiar, in the daily routines of a semester winding toward Christmas break.
But she didn’t.
Because nothing was the same.
As she straightened and prepared this morning’s lecture notes, her students arrived in ones and twos, a few climbing down the stairs to the seats in front, but most hanging back and folding down the seats in the uppermost rows.
“Professor Granger?”
Erin glanced to her left and discovered a young man with five silver hoops along one eyebrow approaching her. The student wore a determined expression on his face as he stepped in front of her. He carried a camera with a long lens over one shoulder.
“Yes?” She didn’t bother to mask the irritation in her voice.
He placed a folded slip of paper atop the wooden lectern and slid it toward her.
Behind him, the other students in the room looked on, nonchalant, but they were unconvincing actors. She could tell they watched her, wondering what she would do. She didn’t need to open that slip of paper to know that it contained the young man’s phone number.
“i’m from the Stanford Daily.” He played with a hoop in his eyebrow. “i was hoping for one quick interview for the school newspaper?”

She pushed the slip of paper back toward him. “No, thank you.”
She had refused all interview requests since returning from Rome. She wouldn’t break her silence now, especially as everything she was allowed to say was a lie.
To hide the truth of the tragic events that had left her two students dead, a story had been put out that she had been trapped three days in the Israeli desert, entombed amid the rubble following an earthquake at Masada. According to that false account, she was discovered alive, along with an army sergeant named Jordan Stone and her sole surviving graduate student, Nate Highsmith.
She understood the necessity of a cover story to explain the time she had spent working for the Vatican, a subterfuge that was further supported by an elite few in the government who also knew the truth. The public wasn’t ready for stories of monsters in the night, of the dark underpinnings that supported the world at large.
Still, necessity or not, she had no intention of elaborating on those lies.
The student with the line of eyebrow rings persisted. “i’d let you review the story before I post it. If you don’t like every single bit, we can work with it until you do.”
“i respect your persistence and diligence, but it does not change my answer.” She gestured to the half-full auditorium. “Please, take your seat.”
He hesitated and seemed about to speak again.
She pulled herself up to her full height and fixed him with her sternest glare. She stood only five foot eight, and with her blond hair tied back in a casual ponytail, she didn’t strike as the most intimidating figure.
Still, it was all about the attitude.
Whatever he saw in her eyes drove him back to the gathering students, where he sank quickly into his seat, keeping his face down. With the matter settled, she tapped her sheaf of notes into a neat pile and drew the class to order. “Thank you all for coming to the final session of History 104: Stripping the divine from biblical History. Today we will discuss common misconceptions about a religious holiday that is almost upon us, namely Christmas.”
The bongs of laptops powering up replaced the once familiar sound of rustling paper as students prepared to take notes.

“What do we celebrate on December twenty-fifth?” She let her gaze play across the students—some pierced, a few tattooed, and several who looked hungover. “december twenty-fifth? Anyone? This one’s a gimme.”
A girl wearing a sweatshirt with an embroidered angel on the front raised her hand. “The birth of Christ?”
“That’s right. but when was Christ actually born?”
No one offered an answer.
She smiled, warming past her fears as she settled into her role as teacher. “That’s smart of you all to avoid that trap.” That earned a few chuckles. “The date of Christ’s birth is actually a matter of some dispute. Clement of Alexandria said . . .”
She continued her lecture. A year ago, she would have said that no one alive today knew the actual date of Christ’s birth. She couldn’t say that anymore, because as part of her adventures in Israel, Russia, and Rome, she had met someone who did know, someone who was alive when Christ was born. in that moment back then, she had realized how much of accepted history was wrong— either masked by ignorance or obscured by purposeful deceptions to hide darker truths.
As an archaeologist, one who sought the history hidden under sand and rock, such a revelation had left her unsettled, unmoored. After returning to the comfortable world of academia, she discovered that she could no longer give the simplest lecture without careful thought. Telling her students the truth, if not the whole truth, had become nearly impossible. every lecture felt like a lie.
How can I continue walking that line, lying to those I’m supposed to teach the truth?
Still, what choice did she have? After having that door briefly opened, revealing the hidden nature of the world, it had been shut just as soundly.
Not shut. Slammed in my face.
Cut off from those truths hidden behind that door, she was left on the outside, left to wonder what was real and what was false.
Finally, the lecture came to an end. She hurriedly wiped clean the whiteboard, as if trying to erase the falsehoods and half-truths found there. At least, it was over. She congratulated herself on making it through the final lecture of the year. All that was left now was to grade her last papers—then she would be free to face the challenge of Christmas break.

Across that stretch of open days, she pictured the blue eyes and hard planes of a rugged face, the full lips that smiled so easily, the smooth brow under a short fall of blond hair. it would be good to see Sergeant Jordan Stone again. it had been several weeks since she had last seen him in person—though they spoke often over the phone. She wasn’t sure where this relationship was going long term, but she wanted to be there to find out.
Of course, that meant picking out the perfect Christmas gift to express that sentiment. She smiled at that thought.
As she began to erase the last line from the whiteboard, ready to dismiss the students behind her, a cloud smothered the sun, cloak- ing the classroom in shadow. The eraser froze on the board. She felt momentarily dizzy, then found herself falling away into—
Absolute darkness.
Stone walls pressed her shoulders. She struggled to sit. Her head smashed against stone, and she fell back with a splash. Frantic hands searched a black world.
Stone all around—above, behind, on all sides. Not rough stone as if she were buried under a mountain. But smooth. Polished like glass. Along the top of the box was a design worked in silver. It scorched
her fingertips.
She gulped, and wine filled her mouth. Enough to drown her. Wine?
A door at the rear of the hall slammed shut, yanking her back into the classroom. She stared at the eraser on the whiteboard, her fingers clutched tightly to it, her knuckles white.
How long have I stood here like this? In front of everyone.
She guessed no more than a few seconds. She’d had bouts like this before over the past few weeks, but never in front of anyone else. She’d dismissed them as post-traumatic stress and had hoped they would go away by themselves, but this last was the most vivid of them all.
She took a deep breath and turned to face her class. They seemed unconcerned, so she couldn’t have been out of it for too long. She must get this under control before something worse happened.
She looked toward the door that had slammed.
A welcome figure stood at the back of the hall. noting her attention, Nate Highsmith lifted up a large envelope and waved it at her. He smiled apologetically, then headed down the classroom in cowboy boots, a hitch in his step a reminder of the torture he had endured last fall.

She tightened her lips. She should have protected him better. And Heinrich. And most especially Amy. If Erin hadn’t exposed the young woman to danger, she might still be alive today. Amy’s parents wouldn’t be spending their first Christmas without their daughter. They had never wanted Amy to be an archaeologist. It was Erin who finally convinced them to let her come along on the dig in Israel. As the senior field researcher, Erin had assured them their daughter would be safe.
in the end, she had been terribly, horribly wrong.
She tilted her boot to feel the reassuring bulge of the gun against her ankle. She wouldn’t get caught flat-footed again. no more innocents would die on her watch.
She cleared her throat and returned her attention to the class. “That wraps it up, folks. You’re all dismissed. enjoy your winter holidays.”
While the room emptied, she forced herself to stare out the window at the bright sky, trying to chase away the darkness left from her vision a moment ago.
Nate finally reached her as the class cleared out. “Professor.” He sounded worried. “I have a message for you.”
“What message?”
“Two of them, actually. The first one is from the Israeli government. They’ve finally released our data from the dig site in Caesarea.” 
“That’s terrific.” She tried to fuel her words with enthusiasm, but failed. if nothing else, Amy and Heinrich would get some credit for their last work, an epitaph for their short lives. “What’s the second
message?”
“It’s from Cardinal Bernard.”
Surprised, she faced Nate more fully. For weeks, she had attempted to reach the cardinal, the head of the order of Sanguines in Rome. She’d even considered flying to Italy and staking out his apartments in Vatican City.
“About time he returned my calls,” she muttered.
“He wanted you to phone him at once,” Nate said. “Sounded like an emergency.”

Erin sighed in exasperation. Bernard had ignored her for two months, but now he needed something from her. She had a thousand questions for him—concerns and thoughts that had built up over the past weeks since returning from Rome. She glanced to the white- board, eyeing the half-erased line. She had questions about those visions, too.
Were these episodes secondary to post traumatic stress? Was she reliving the times that she spent trapped under Masada?
But if so, why do I keep tasting wine?
She shook her head to clear it and pointed to his hand. “What’s in the envelope?”
“It’s addressed to you.” He handed it to her.
It weighed too much to contain just a letter. Erin scanned the return address.
Israel.
Her fingers trembled slightly as she slit open the top with her pen.
Nate noted how her hand quivered and looked concerned. She knew he was talking to a counselor about his own PTSd. They were two wounded survivors with secrets that could not be fully spoken aloud.
Shaking the envelope, she slid out a single sheet of typewritten paper and an object about the size and shape of a quail’s egg. Her heart sank as she recognized the object.
Even Nate let out a small gasp and took a step back.
She didn’t have that luxury. She read the enclosed page quickly. it was from the Israeli security forces. They had determined that the enclosed artifact was no longer relevant to the closed investigation of their case, and they hoped that she would give it to its rightful owner.
She cradled the polished chunk of amber in her palm, as if it were the most precious object in the world. Under the dull fluorescent light, it looked like little more than a shiny brown rock, but it felt warmer to the touch. light reflected off its surface, and in the very center, a tiny dark feather hung motionless, preserved across thou- sands of years, a moment of time frozen forever in amber.
“Amy’s good luck charm,” Nate mumbled, swallowing hard. He had been there when Amy was murdered. He kept his eyes averted from the tiny egg of amber.
Erin placed a hand on nate’s elbow in sympathy. In fact, the talisman was more than Amy’s good luck charm. one day out at the dig, Amy had explained to Erin that she had found the amber on a beach as a little girl, and she’d been fascinated by the feather imprisoned inside, wondering where it had come from, picturing the wing from which it might have fallen. The amber captured her imagination as fully as it had the feather. It was what sparked Amy’s desire to study archaeology.

Erin gazed at the amber in her palm, knowing that this tiny object had led not only to Amy’s field of study—but also to her death.
Her fingers closed tightly over the smooth stone, squeezing her determination, making herself a promise.
Never again . . . 

Bestselling Author Rob Bell's Launch Event For "What We Talk About When We Talk About God."

                               Join New York Times bestselling author

Rob Bell for the launch of his new book,

WHAT WE TALK ABOUT

WHEN WE TALK ABOUT GOD

Bell’s launch event will stream live from

the powerHouse Arena in Brooklyn

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

4pm PST / 7pm EST.

Rob Bell was named one of Time Magazine’s

100 most influential people of 2011.

Join the conversation via USTREAM, visit www.RobBellLive.com

To learn more about attending the powerHouse event

and purchasing tickets, click here.

(from ad by Harper Collins Publishing)

Words That Matter

Brought to you by Harper Collins Publishing from the Editors of O, Oprah Winfrey's magazine, comes this enlightening book, "Words That Matter".  Valuable quotes to inspire, uplift and encourage are found within.  Looks to be a promising read and a possible bestseller.  Check this link for more:
http://browseinside.harpercollins.ca/index.aspx?isbn13=9780061996337&cm_mmc=ref-_-ptnr-_-sympatico-_-9780061996337

"Nothing really worth having is easy to get. The hard-fought battles, the goals won with sacrifice, are the ones that matter." -- Aisha Tyler, actress and comedian


"Fortune helps those who dare." -- Virgil, poet

"Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last you create what you will." -- George Bernard Shaw, playwright

"I fear only God. I don't fear any human. When you have that kind of spirit, you can just do what you have to do. Let it roll." -- Stevie Wonder, singer