Stephanie Life of Determination

ABOUT THE BOOK One of the great heroines of the Old Testament, Hadassah was a beautiful, graceful young woman who put her faith in God and her guardian, her cousin Mordecai . She dreams of marrying Shamir, a tall, handsome, studious young man who is the rabbi’s son. Her heart beats faster when she hears the sound of his deep voice as he reads the Torah. And she hopes that he will visit Mordecai soon to present a betrothal request. Then, an upheaval in King Xerxes’s palace changes everything. Queen Vashti has been banished and an edict goes out for all qualified young virgins throughout the empire to be taken to the palace as he searches for a new queen. Fear strikes in the hearts of many, including Mordecai, as he realizes Hadassah will be taken. To hide her identity as a Jew, he tells her to go by the name of Esther. Since he works as a record-keeper at the king’s gates, he can keep tabs on how she is doing. Hadassah: Queen Esther of Persia  imagines what life was like f

SYNOPSIS Warsaw, Poland. The year is 1940 and Lillia is 15 when her mother, Alenka, disappears and her father flees with Lillia and her younger sister, Naomi, to Shanghai, one of the few places that will accept Jews without visas. There they struggle to make a life; they have no money, there is little work, no decent place to live, a culture that doesn't understand them. And always the worry about Alenka. How will she find them? Is she still alive? Meanwhile Lillia is growing up, trying to care for Naomi, whose development is frighteningly slow, in part from malnourishment. Lillia finds an outlet for her artistic talent by making puppets, remembering the happy days in Warsaw when they were circus performers. She attends school sporadically, makes friends with Wei, a Chinese boy, and finds work as a performer at a "gentlemen's club" without her father's knowledge. But meanwhile the conflict grows more intense as the Americans declare war and the Japanese

ABOUT THE BOOK He marries her out of need. She marries him to escape. What does love have to do with it? When her father falsely accuses a stranger of dishonoring her, Bethel Eicher finds herself promised in marriage to a man she’s never met. Not exactly a dream come true, but since she has spent several years caring for her handicapped mother, she’s already considered an old maid at twenty-five—and she longs to escape her lonely life as a permanent caregiver. When newly-called Amish preacher Gideon Kaiser learns he’s been accused of a dishonorable act, he’s horrified. But his wife died in childbirth and his baby needs a mother, so he figures marrying a woman he’s never met could be beneficial. How can Bethel and Gideon possibly make their marriage work—especially when the truth behind the accusations is revealed? Book:  Married to a Stranger   Author:  Laura V. Hilton Genre:  Christian Amish Romance Fiction Release date:  July 2, 2019 BOOK REVIEW Laura V. Hilton i