Pompeii: City on Fire
By T.L. Higley
"Riveting action and compelling characters . . . I simply could not read fast enough!"
—Ronie Kendig , Author of Digitalis
Pleasure-seeking Romans find the seaside town of Pompeii the perfect getaway. But when the rich patrician Cato escapes Rome, intent on a life of leisure, he is unprepared for the hostility he encounters.
In the same place, but at the opposite end of society, Ariella has disguised herself as a young boy to be sold into a gladiator troupe. Survival is her only ambition. But evil creeps through the streets of Pompeii, and neither Ariella's secret nor Cato's evasion is immune to it. Political corruption, religious persecution, and family peril threaten to destroy them, even before an ominous mountain in the distance spews its fire. As Vesuvius churns with deadly intent, Cato and Ariella must bridge their differences
to save the lives of those they love—before fiery ash buries Pompeii, turning the city into a lost world.
From the Prologue
Jerusalem, August 9, 70 AD
Ariella shoved through the clogged street, defying the mob of frantic citizens. Men, women, and children crowded the alleys, senseless in their panic to flee the city. They carried all they could, packed into pouches slung across their chests and clutched in sweaty hands. Soldiers ran with them, as though they had all joined a macabre stadium footrace, with participants who clubbed and slashed at each other to get ahead. Beside her, one of the district's tax collectors tripped and fumbled a latched wooden box. It cracked against the cobbled street and spilled its meager hoard of gold. The tax collector was dead before he hit the ground, and the Roman soldier pulled his sword from the man's gut only to scrabble for the coins.
Ariella turned her head from the gore, but felt little pity for the tax man, cheated of life by the Romans for whom he had betrayed his people. Still, concern flickered in her chest at the sudden violence in the street.
Something has happened.
The city had been under siege for months. Three days ago her mother announced that the sacrifices in the Temple had ceased. But today, today was something new.
Perhaps three days of sins not atoned for had brought the wrath of the Holy One down on them all.
Unlike those who ran the streets with her, Ariella's destination was neither Temple nor countryside. She returned to her home—if the dim tenement could be called such—from another useless excur
sion to secure food.
At sixteen and as eldest child, it fell on her to search the famished city for a scrap of dried beef to feed her brother, perhaps a thimbleful of milk for the baby, crumbs for her father whose eyes had gone glassy and whose skin was now the color of the clay pots he once turned on the wheel.
But there was no food to be found. Titus, the emperor's son, had arrived in the spring with his army of eighty thousand and his siege wall served well its double function—the people were trapped and they were starving.
Not even such a wall could prevent news from seeping through its cracks, however. From Caesarea, word escaped of twenty thousand Jews slaughtered in a day. Fifty thousand killed in Alexandria. Ten thousand met the sword in Gamla. Such numbers were incomprehensible.
Here in Jerusalem, the bodies thrown outside the city were too numerous to count, piled high in rotting mounds, as though the city itself were defiled and would forever be unclean.
Yet we are not all dead. Ariella's hands curled into tense fists as she rounded the last corner. She would cling to life as long as she had strength, and like her untiring mother, she would hold tight to that elusive thread for each member of her family.
She pushed against the rough wood of the door and slipped out of the rush of the street. The home's tomb-like interior had the peculiar smell of starvation. In the corner, her baby sister whimpered as if in response to Ariella's entrance. Micah met her at the door, his sunken eyes fixed on her and his lips slightly open, as though anticipating the food she might have brought. Or perhaps he simply lacked the strength to close his jaw. She shook her head and Micah turned away, hiding his disappointment as all boys of eleven do when they are threatened by tears.
Her father did not speak from his mat on the floor. Ariella scooped the listless baby Hannah into her arms and gave her a finger to suck. Small consolation.
"Where is Mother?" She scanned the room, then looked to Micah. A low groan from her father set her heart pounding. "Where is she, Micah? Where has Mother gone?"
Micah sniffed and glanced at the door. "To the Temple. She has gone to the Temple."
Ariella growled and pushed Hannah into her brother's arms. "She is going to get herself killed, and then where will we be?"
She bent to her father's side. The man had been strong once. Ariella could barely remember. She touched the cool skin of his arm. "I will bring her back, Father. I promise." Her father's eyes sought her own, searching for reassurance. The hunger seemed to have stolen his voice. How long until it took his mind?
She turned on Micah, grabbed his shoulder. "Do not let anyone inside. The streets--" She looked to the door. "The streets are full of madness."
He nodded, still cradling Hannah.
She kissed the baby. "Take care of them, Micah." And then she left to retrieve her mother, whose political fervor often outpaced her common sense.
The mid-summer sun had dropped in the sky, an orange disc hazy and indistinct behind rising smoke. The city burns. She smelled it, sensed it, felt it somehow on her skin as she joined the flow toward the temple – a heat of destruction that threatened to consume them all.
Her family enjoyed the privilege of living in the shadow of the Temple Mount. A privilege that today only put them closer to folly. She twisted through the crazed mob, darted around wagons and pushcarts laden with family treasures, swatted at those who shoved against her. Already, only halfway there, her heart struck against her chest and her breathing shallowed, the weakness of slow starvation.
She reached the steps to the south of the Temple platform and was swept upward with the masses. Why were so many running to the Temple? Why had her mother?
And then she heard it. A sound that was part shrieking anger, part mournful lament, a screaming funeral dirge for the city and its people. She reached the top of the steps, pushed through the
Huldah Gate, dashed under the colonnade into the Court of the Gentiles, and drew up short. The crowd pressed against her back, flowed around her and surged onward, but Ariella could not move.
The Temple is on fire.
Read the first three chapters, watch video trailers, and dive into Tracy's adventures at http://www.NoPassportRequired.TLHigley.com.
Pompeii: City on Fire can be purchased at Amazon,Christianbook.com, and wherever books are sold.
© 2011 T.L. Higley
* * *
SECOND CHANCE DAD
Love Inspired
June, 2011
Roxanne Rustand
He Was A Challenge She Couldn't Ignore...
The minute she steps foot in his dark, miserable house, Sophie Alexander knows Josh McClaren
is not her usual patient. But the single mom and physical therapist is desperate to make a life for
her and her young son. And she's definitely no quitter! It's obvious to Sophie that handsome,
cantankerous Josh hides his pain behind a wall of grief. Little by little, Sophie and her son,
Eli, do more than help Josh find his faith again. They make Josh wonder if there's a family in
his future after all....
Aspen Creek Crossroads: Where faith, love and healing meet.
Sophie stepped out of her ancient Taurus sedan but lingered at the open door, staring at the massive dog on the porch of the sprawling cabin. The dog stared back at her with laser-like intensity, head lowered and tail stiff.
It was not a welcoming pose.
Set back in the deep shadows of the pine trees crowding so close, the cabin itself--with all the windows dark--seemed even more menacing than a wolfhound mix with very sharp teeth. So what kind of person would be sitting in there, in all that gloomy darkness?
"Don't worry about the dog," Grace Dearborn had said with a breezy smile during Sophie's orientation at the county home health department offices. "He's quite the bluffer. It's the owner who is more likely to bite."
Sophie looked at the folder in her hand again. Dr. Josh McLaren. Widower. Lives alone. No local support system. Post-surgical healing of comminuted fracture, right leg with a knee replacement. Surgical repair of fractured L-4 and L-5 lumbar vertebrae, multiple comminuted fractures, right hand.
Had he been hit by a truck? She shuddered, imagining the pain he'd been through. The surgeries and therapy had to have been as bad as the injuries. The only other documentation in the folder were scant, frustrated progress notes written by her various physical therapist predecessors. The last one had ignored professional convention by inserting his personal feelings into his notes.
The man is surly and impossible.
Ten minutes spend arguing about the need for therapy. Five minutes of deep massage of his right leg and strengthening exercises before he ordered me out of his house.
And the final note...
I give up. Doctor or not, McLaren is a highly unpleasant client and I will not be coming back here.
Sophie scanned the documents again, vainly searching for a birth date or mention of the man's age. Maybe he was an old duffer, like her grandfather. Crotchety and isolated and clinging to his independence.
The job was just temporary--three months covering for the regular therapist
who'd gone to Chicago for some advanced training. But if Sophie did exceptionally well, Grace would try to push the county board to approve hiring her on a permanent basis.
The thought had lifted Sophie's heart with joy, though now some of her giddy excitement faded. She set her jaw. If her ability to stay in Aspen Creek hinged on those stipulations, then no one--not even this difficult old man--was going to stand in her way. Far too much depended on it.
"Buddy, I'm going to overwhelm you with kindness, and your mean ole dog, too," she muttered under her breath as she pawed through a grocery sack on the front seat of her car. "See how you like that."
Withdrawing a small can, she peeled off the outer plastic storage lid, pulled the tab to open the can and held it high. "Salmon," she crooned. "Come and get it."
It took a minute for the scent to drift over to the cabin. The dog's head jerked up. He sniffed the breeze, then he cautiously started across the stretch of grass between the cabin and driveway.
She stayed in the lee of her open car door, ready to leap back inside at the least sign of aggression. But by the time the dog reached her front bumper his tongue was lolling and his tail wagging.
She grabbed a plastic spoon on her dashboard--a remnant of her last trip to a Dairy Queen--and scooped up a chunk of the pungent, pink fish. She dropped it on the grass and the dog wolfed it down, his tail wagging even faster. "Friends?"
She held out a cautious hand and he licked it, his eyes riveted on the can in her other hand. "Just one bite. When I come out, I'll give you one more. Deal?"
His entire body wagged as he followed her to the cabin door and watched her knock..
No one had peered outside. No lights shone through the windows. What if...what if the old guy had passed on? Her heart in her throat, she framed her face with her hands and pressed her nose to a pane of glass, trying to peer into the gloom. Knocked again. And then she tentatively, quietly tried the door knob.
It turned easily in her hand. She pulled the door open, just an inch. "Hello? Anyone here?" She raised her voice. "I'm from the home health agency."
No answer.
Thundered rumbled outside, heavy and ominous. A nearby crack of lightning shook the porch beneath her feet. She opened the door wider, then bracketed her hands against the inner screen door and tried to look inside. "Hello?"
The dog at her side shoved past her, sending the door swinging back to crash against the interior wall. So much for subtlety.
"Hello," she yelled. "Are you here? Are you okay?"
If the old fellow had died, she had no business disturbing the scene. The sheriff should be called, and the coroner. If he was in there with a shotgun, she sure didn't want to surprise him. But on the other hand, if he needed help, she could hardly walk away. Steeling herself, she reached around the corner and found a light switch.
Only a single, weak bulb came to life in the center of the room, leaving most of it dark. A figure suddenly loomed over her, making her heart lurch into overdrive with fear. Tall. Broad shoulders. Silhouetted by the faint light behind him, she couldn't make out his expression, but his stance telegraphed irritation.
This definitely wasn't some old guy.
Raising her hands defensively, she backed up a step, but then she saw the dog amble over and sit at the man's side. He rested a gentle hand on the animal's head.
"I-I'm sorry," she faltered, searching his face. He didn't look disabled...but then she saw the telltale signs of tension in his stance, as if he were guarding himself against injuries that probably still kept him up at night.
He said nothing.
"You must be Dr. McLaren. I thought...I thought you were old," she stammered as her eyes adjusted to the gloom. "When you didn't answer, I...um...I was afraid that you might be dead."
"Unfortunately, no," he growled. He glanced at her upraised hands, then met her eyes with a piercing stare. "So who are you, and why are you threatening me with that can of salmon?"
Do Not Reproduce without permission.
This book is available at :
and fine bookstores everywhere.
Author Roxanne Rustand can be found at www.roxannerustand.com and her blog, http://roxannerustand.blogspot.com.
To subscribe to her quarterly e-newsletter, which offers prize drawings, family recipes and news about her books, go to: http://roxannerustand.com/newsletter-signup
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