Announcing the winners of last week’s Widow of Gettysburg giveaway:

Sally DeKok Huston

Zeanne Blanco

Crystal Brokopp

Carlee Baxter

Cherie Hamby Kasper

Ted Nalin Senapatiratne

Bette Statham

Darcy Molenaar

Peg Mosbo

Ivy Boor

We’ll be contacting you today about getting your free copy to you as soon as possible! If you see your name above and did not provide an email address, be sure to send us a private message right away! If we don’t hear from you soon, we’ll have to choose someone else!

But that’s not all the good news.

This week we are giving away TEN paperback copies of the Christian Book Award-nominated Harvest of Rubies by Tessa Afshar!

To enter the contest, simply leave a comment below with your email and a response to this question:

If you could have been friends with any person mentioned in the Bible (besides Jesus), which character would you choose? Why?  

To learn more about this novel and Tessa’s other books, check out any of the links below:

Our Author Q&A with Tessa Afshar

Harvest of Rubies page on Tessa’s website

Review on Composed by Grace

Reviews on Goodreads

And watch the trailer for Harvest of Rubies here.

Happy Reading! Continue reading / Leave a comment…

Tessa Afshar’s next highly-anticipated biblical novel, Harvest of Gold, will be releasing in June. It is the sequel to Harvest of Rubies, a 2013 ECPA Book Award nominee. Tessa took some time to answer our questions about her faith, writing, and new website. For those interested in reading some of Tessa’s work (or reading more of it), stay tuned for next week’s book giveaway from River North. In the meantime, check out her thoughtful and fascinating responses below:

Briefly tell us about your conversion to Christianity.

I grew up in the Middle East until I was almost fourteen. My parents were nominal Muslims. Although I had lived in the Christian West my whole adult life, I had never heard the gospel. I was going through a particularly difficult season in my life. One night, I had a vivid dream. In my dream I was on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. From a distance I saw a man walking toward me and I knew instantly that this was Jesus. As He drew closer, I felt very disappointed. You see, He was not handsome by any stretch of the imagination! The only Jesus I had seen up to this point was portrayed by a couple of very good-looking actors in TV movies. I thought, This is Jesus?

As He came closer I realized, Of course this is Jesus, for in His eyes I saw such depth of love and power that I almost fell to my knees. He asked me to follow Him and I did. Continue reading / Leave a comment…