In Sterling City, Iowa, something extraordinary is about to unfold on a street where ordinary people live ordinary lives. Beneath the surface of this small Midwestern town, a spiritual battle is already raging—darkness clashing ferociously against the brilliance of God’s light in ways the residents can’t see but definitely feel. The oppressive weight of unspoken struggles, the quiet desperation behind closed doors, the slow erosion of faith and hope and connection that characterizes so many modern lives—these are not accidents but casualties of a war being waged in the unseen realms. Then one day, everything changes when Jesus of Nazareth moves into the old farmhouse at 30 Summit Avenue. Not a metaphor, not a spiritual presence, not a feeling—the actual Jesus, in the flesh, taking up residence on a tree-lined street in Iowa. ✝️
His eyes burn with intensity as He walks through the neighborhood, an intensity that makes people uncomfortable and unable to look away at the same time. This isn’t the gentle Jesus of Sunday school flannel boards, all soft focus and loving gazes. This Jesus fights for those He meets with a fierceness that startles residents accustomed to religion that asks for nothing and promises everything. He shows up at unexpected moments, asks uncomfortable questions, sees through carefully constructed facades to the truth people work hard to hide from themselves. His presence on Summit Avenue is disruptive in the best and worst ways—disruptive to comfortable lies, to destructive patterns, to the spiritual complacency that allows darkness to flourish unchallenged. And the enemy is absolutely not happy about this development. The forces that have worked to isolate, discourage, and destroy the residents of Summit Avenue now face direct opposition, and they’re not going quietly. 👁️
As the lives on Summit Avenue begin to intertwine in ways they never have before—because nothing brings neighbors together quite like Jesus moving in next door—He ignites hope where cynicism had taken root, pushes boundaries that people erected to keep both danger and possibility at arm’s length, and opens doors to redemption and self-discovery that most had assumed were permanently closed. The residents find themselves on transformative journeys they never asked for and often don’t want. Jesus doesn’t offer easy answers or comfortable spirituality; He offers truth, and truth is rarely comfortable at first. He challenges the workaholic to examine what he’s running from, confronts the woman hiding behind perfection about what she’s afraid to admit, asks the man nursing bitterness why he’s chosen to let it poison his life. Amidst the struggles and challenges they face—some external, some internal, all difficult—the residents discover that transformation doesn’t follow the paths they’d prefer to take. 🏘️
The journey Jesus leads them on is not the journey they’d choose if given options. It’s harder, more painful, more exposing than the comfortable Christian life they’d imagined. But it’s also more real, more redemptive, more aligned with the actual gospel than anything they’ve experienced in their air-conditioned sanctuaries and carefully orchestrated worship services. Each resident of Summit Avenue must decide what to do with this Jesus who refuses to stay safely contained in Sunday services and theological discussions, who insists on walking into their actual lives with all the mess and brokenness they’d rather keep hidden. Some resist, some run, some reluctantly engage—but none remain unchanged. Because when Jesus moves in next door, neutrality stops being an option, and the spiritual battle that’s always been raging becomes impossible to ignore. 🌅
What makes this powerful: Sean Elliot Russell has written the kind of bold contemporary Christian fiction that asks “what if Jesus showed up in actual person in modern America” and follows that premise to its uncomfortable, convicting, ultimately beautiful conclusions. This isn’t feel-good inspirational fiction that wraps difficult truths in comfortable packaging—it’s a raw examination of what real encounter with Christ might actually look like, complete with resistance, transformation, and spiritual warfare that’s more than metaphor. For readers hungry for Christian fiction that doesn’t shy away from the hard parts of faith, that portrays Jesus as disruptive as He is redemptive, and that takes spiritual battle seriously, this offers substance that respects both the reader’s intelligence and the gravity of the gospel. 📖
She’s made a promise she’ll die to keep, words spoken with the absolute conviction that comes from believing you understand what you’re committing to—until life tests your mettle and reveals that keeping promises sometimes costs more than you ever imagined paying. Gini operates an orphanage with her closest friend, pouring everything she has into caring for children who have no one else. They’re not just her charges; they’re her children in every way that matters, and she’ll do whatever it takes to keep them fed, clothed, and safe. Then poverty strikes with devastating force, finances tightening to the point where basic necessities become luxuries they can’t afford. Gini watches her children go hungry, sees their hollow eyes and listens to their stomachs rumble, and makes a decision that speaks to her desperation: she’ll even sell her hair—her one vanity, her crowning glory—for enough money to buy meat to feed her children. 👧
John came to Nebraska seeking exactly what he found: a quiet life far from the chaos and trauma of his past, a place where he could lick his wounds in peace and maybe find some measure of healing. He’s been through things he doesn’t talk about, carrying losses that still wake him in the night and leave him staring at darkness until dawn. The rustlers who routed out his sister and her dying husband have left John with both a ranch to resurrect from the ashes and a burning need for the kind of solitude that lets broken men put themselves back together piece by piece. He’s working to bring the ranch back from devastation, doing the backbreaking labor that transforms destroyed land into productive property, finding something almost meditative in the physical work that keeps his hands busy and his mind from dwelling on things he can’t change. But Nebraska’s dangers didn’t die with his sister’s troubles—the rustlers are still operating, still a threat, and John has to wonder if they’ll target him too. 🤠
When Gini is caught in the crossfire of violence she didn’t invite and has no way to defend against, the rustlers she knew nothing about suddenly become her problem. They follow her home, bringing danger directly to her doorstep where vulnerable children sleep, transforming the orphanage from sanctuary into target. It’s every nightmare Gini has ever had about failing to protect those in her care, made manifest in men with guns and bad intentions. John, despite his own fears of loss and his desperate desire to avoid more pain, discovers he can’t stand by and watch his neighbor face this threat alone. His past has taught him what happens when good people do nothing, and whatever his personal demons, cowardice isn’t among them. He must get over his paralyzing fears of experiencing more loss—fears that are entirely rational given what he’s already endured—to save Gini and the children who’ve become collateral damage in a range war they didn’t start. 🔫
But there’s a complication neither of them anticipated: Gini’s promise, the one she swore to keep even unto death, stands squarely in their way. The commitment she made before she knew John, before she could imagine feeling what she’s starting to feel for him, creates an obstacle that seems insurmountable. John wants to protect her, wants to be more than a helpful neighbor, but her promise—whatever its nature—creates a barrier between them that honor won’t let her cross and that circumstances force them to confront. Both John and Gini will have to lean into the Lord’s will, trusting even when trust feels impossible, even if it means questioning everything they’ve ever known about duty, promise-keeping, and what God actually requires of His people versus what they’ve convinced themselves He demands. Sometimes keeping the letter of a vow means violating its spirit, and sometimes the most faithful thing you can do is recognize when circumstances have changed enough that holding to old promises requires breaking new ones. ⛪
What makes this resonate: Kari Trumbo delivers Christian historical fiction that doesn’t shy away from the genuine hardships of frontier life or the complex ethical questions that arise when promises made in good faith collide with unanticipated circumstances. The orphanage setting creates immediate sympathy while raising the stakes beyond typical romance conflicts—children’s lives hang in the balance, adding urgency and moral weight to every decision. For readers who love prairie romances grounded in faith, protector heroes carrying hidden wounds, and heroines whose strength comes from sacrifice rather than self-assertion, this series starter promises both the comfort of Christian fiction and the substance of real moral complexity. 🌾
At the end of the 13th century, in a time when the line between religious devotion and political exploitation grows dangerously thin, five hundred orphans and second sons are rounded up from villages scattered across the Alpine countryside. These boys—some barely old enough to understand what’s happening to them—are torn from everything they know and sold to the Hospitaller Knights of St John like livestock at market. Their families receive payment or promises; the boys receive a future they never chose. Trained to serve as Soldiers of Christ in the military religious order, they fight in eastern lands they know nothing about, shedding blood for a cause they do not understand, dying for theological disputes that mean nothing to peasant boys who just wanted to grow up in the mountains they called home. For most, the Alps become a fading memory, replaced by desert heat and the clash of steel against steel. ⚔️
Thomas Schwyzer is one of the few who makes it back, released from his vows after years of service that transformed him from Alpine farm boy into something else entirely. He returns to the land of his birth a stranger, no longer fitting into the simple rhythms of mountain life he once knew. He was a leader of men in the Order, a captain of the Knights’ most famous war galley, someone who commanded respect and bore responsibility for dozens of lives. Now he settles into the humble life of a ferryman, rowing people and goods across waters that seem impossibly peaceful compared to the blood-soaked seas he sailed as a warrior. It’s an existence that should bring peace, this return to simplicity, but Thomas discovers you can’t unbecome what experience has forged you into. The skills that made him valuable as a knight—leadership, tactical thinking, the ability to read danger before it strikes—don’t simply disappear because he trades his sword for an oar. 🚣
Seraina inhabits a completely different world, though she shares the same mountains and valleys. Most consider her a witch, viewing her with suspicion and fear born from ignorance. Some recognize her as a healer, seeking her out when conventional remedies fail and lives hang in the balance. She is both and neither—a Priestess of the Old Religion, the last druid disciple of the Helvetii Celts, keeper of knowledge that predates Christianity by centuries. Gifted by what her people call the Great Weave, Seraina possesses the ability to see what others cannot, to perceive the patterns of past and future woven through the present moment. Her people desperately need her guidance and protection now more than ever because their world is ending, though most don’t yet realize the scope of the threat they face. Duke Leopold of Habsburg is building a great Austrian fortress in Altdorf, and every stone laid is another shackle on the freedom her people have enjoyed for generations. 🌲
Once the fortress is finished, the Habsburg occupation will be complete—the military infrastructure in place to enforce foreign rule on people who’ve governed themselves since time immemorial. But Seraina knows through her visions and her reading of the Great Weave that the fortress is just the beginning. The atrocities visited upon her people will escalate once the occupation is secure: forced conversions that erase ancient traditions, taxation that reduces free farmers to serfs, the systematic destruction of the Celtic way of life in favor of Habsburg control and Catholic orthodoxy. She cannot stop the fortress’s construction alone, cannot lead a military resistance with only her mystical gifts. But Thomas Schwyzer, the returned knight who thinks he’s done with warfare, possesses exactly the skills her people need. The question is whether a man trying to leave violence behind can be convinced to take it up again for a cause that isn’t sanctioned by church or king—and whether a Celtic priestess and a Christian knight can find common cause in defending a land they both love against invaders who see them as equally expendable. ⛰️
Why this captivates: J.K. Swift has crafted an epic historical fantasy set against the majestic backdrop of medieval Switzerland, blending meticulously researched history with Celtic mysticism and the birth of Swiss independence. The collision between Thomas’s Christian warrior background and Seraina’s druid priestess tradition creates fascinating tension, while the Habsburg occupation provides clear stakes and a villain in Duke Leopold who represents institutional oppression rather than cartoonish evil. For readers who love Bernard Cornwell’s historical battles, the spiritual complexity of Guy Gavriel Kay, or anyone fascinated by the formation of Switzerland and the clash between old ways and new powers, this series opener delivers authentic medieval atmosphere, Celtic magic, and the kind of resistance story that resonates across centuries. 🗡️
The Shark (Forgotten Files Book 1)
Virginia state trooper Riley Tatum arrives at a crime scene that should be routine by now—tragic, certainly, but routine in the grim calculus of law enforcement. A teenage prostitute has been murdered, the violence brutal and deliberate, and Riley’s job is to process the scene, document the evidence, and help build a case that might actually lead to justice for this forgotten victim. But as she surveys the details—the positioning of the body, the particular brutality of the wounds, the meticulous staging that suggests a killer who takes pride in his work—something shifts inside her. This isn’t just another case. This scene is reaching across years to grab her by the throat, dredging up memories she’s spent half her life trying to bury. When Riley was a teenage runaway, desperate and vulnerable on the streets, she was kidnapped, drugged, and left unconscious in an alley with no memory of what happened during the hours she was missing. She’s lived with that gap in her memory ever since, that terrifying blank space that could contain anything. Now, standing over this victim who could have been her, Riley’s past roars back to haunt her with devastating force. 🚨
The only traces Riley has of her own ordeal are fragments of recurring dreams that feel more like memories trying to surface through heavy sedation. In these dreams, there are two men, their features always just out of focus, playing cards while something terrible happens just beyond the frame of her vision. She’s never been able to make sense of these images, never been certain whether they’re genuine memories or her mind’s attempt to fill the void with narrative. But seeing this crime scene triggers something, a recognition that bypasses conscious thought and sends ice through her veins. This killing bears signatures she doesn’t consciously remember but somehow knows, patterns that resonate with something buried deep in her traumatized psyche. Riley has always suspected she was a victim of something monstrous during those lost hours, but she’s managed to build a life despite the gaps in her story. Now she’s beginning to suspect the truth might be even worse than she imagined—that she didn’t just survive an attack, she survived a killer who doesn’t leave survivors. 💔
Enter Clay Bowman, Riley’s former flame and now Shield Security’s newest member. Clay carries his own burden from his FBI days—the unsolved case that haunts him, the one that followed him into his dreams and eventually drove him from the Bureau. The Shark, they called him, a serial killer who turned murder into sport, playing sadistic poker games with his victims’ lives as the stakes. Clay knows more about this monster than anyone, has spent years building a profile that reads like a nightmare made flesh: methodical, intelligent, patient, and utterly without conscience. The Shark murdered girls as part of an elaborate game, each victim chosen according to rules only the killer understood, each death staged with theatrical precision. But something went wrong with one victim—somehow, impossibly, one girl escaped his carefully orchestrated death game. Clay has been haunted by questions ever since: Who was she? How did she survive? And most importantly, where is she now? Looking at Riley across this crime scene, seeing her reaction to details she shouldn’t recognize, Clay feels a terrible suspicion crystallizing into horrifying certainty. 🃏
The realization hits them both at the same moment, connecting dots neither wanted to see: Riley is the girl who got away, the only survivor of the Shark’s deadly amusement. And if Clay’s understanding of this particular monster is correct—and his understanding has never been wrong—the Shark doesn’t tolerate loose ends. He’s had years to stew over his one failure, years to plan his correction, years to wait for the right moment to finish what he started. Now that moment has arrived. The Shark is no longer content to let his mistake walk free; he’s bent on evening the score, on completing the game Riley interrupted just by surviving. The fresh murders aren’t random escalation—they’re calling cards, messages designed to draw Riley in and remind her that she was never really free. Clay and Riley find themselves in a desperate race against a killer who’s already proven himself more cunning than the FBI’s best hunters, more patient than the justice system, and now personally motivated to claim the one victim who escaped. The stakes couldn’t be higher: stop the Shark before he completes his final play, or Riley becomes the hand he always meant to win. 🎯
Why this launches an addictive series: Mary Burton delivers romantic suspense at its finest—dark, gritty, emotionally complex, and utterly unputdownable. The setup is devastating in its implications: Riley has been living in the shadow of trauma she couldn’t remember, while Clay has been tormented by a case he couldn’t solve, and now their separate nightmares converge in a collision that’s both terrifying and somehow inevitable. Burton doesn’t shy away from darkness but balances it with the redemptive power of two damaged people finding strength in each other when they need it most. For fans of Karen Rose, Laura Griffin, or Melinda Leigh who love their romantic suspense heavy on the suspense and earned on the romance, this series opener delivers everything you crave—pulse-pounding procedural detail, psychological depth, and a love story forged in the crucible of survival. 📚
Young Rhea is the daughter of a miller, a practical girl of common birth who understands her place in the social hierarchy and harbors no illusions about marrying above her station. So when the mysterious and obviously wealthy Lord Crevan appears at her family’s door with a marriage proposal, Rhea’s first reaction is understandable confusion. Men like him don’t marry girls like her—the nobility takes mistresses from the peasant class if they’re interested, but marriage? That’s reserved for political alliances and advantageous matches. Yet here stands Lord Crevan, making his offer with all the formal courtesy due a lady of high birth, and Rhea quickly realizes she has no real choice in the matter. Commoners simply don’t refuse lords, regardless of how sinister those lords may seem, regardless of the cold calculation in their eyes or the way the shadows seem to cling to them like living things. Social convention and the raw power differential between them mean Rhea’s consent is essentially irrelevant—she must agree to the engagement, must smile and accept, even as every instinct screams warnings about the man claiming her hand. 💍
Lord Crevan doesn’t immediately drag Rhea to the altar, which might almost be reassuring if his alternative weren’t so unsettling. Instead, he demands that she visit his remote manor house before the wedding, to “get acquainted with her future home” as he puts it with a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. Rhea makes the journey with growing dread, the landscape becoming increasingly wild and unwelcoming as she approaches the estate, and her worst fears are confirmed the moment she steps inside. The manor is exactly as nightmarish as she’d imagined—cold, cavernous, filled with strange sounds and stranger shadows—but the true horror reveals itself gradually. Lord Crevan wasn’t lying when he called himself a lord, but he neglected to mention he’s also a sorcerer of considerable power. And the “six times widowed” detail he casually drops? Also technically accurate, except his previous wives aren’t dead. They’re imprisoned within his enchanted castle, transformed through dark magic into various states of existence that can barely be called living. Rhea meets them one by one—women who came before her, each one initially drawn by promises or compelled by circumstance, each one now trapped in a nightmare with no visible escape. 🏰
Faced with the reality of her situation—destined to become the seventh addition to Lord Crevan’s collection of imprisoned wives—Rhea does something that surprises everyone, including herself. She refuses to accept this fate passively. With a directness that borders on foolhardy, she looks her future captor in the eye and asserts her desire for freedom, her unwillingness to become another victim of his twisted collection. It’s a moment of extraordinary courage from a girl who’s supposed to have no power, no agency, no right to refuse anything a lord demands. Lord Crevan, to his credit or perhaps his arrogance, doesn’t simply overpower her or force the marriage immediately. Instead, he offers her what seems like a chance—a series of magical tasks she must complete, each one more dangerous and bizarre than the last. The rules are simple but nightmarish: “Come back before dawn, or else I’ll marry you.” If she succeeds at his impossible tasks, she might earn her freedom. If she fails, or if she doesn’t return by sunrise, she’ll be bound to him forever, joining the other wives in their enchanted prison. ⏰
With time running out and each task escalating in both danger and surreal horror, Rhea quickly realizes that Lord Crevan’s challenges aren’t designed to be survivable—they’re designed to break her spirit, to prove that resistance is futile, to demonstrate the futility of fighting against his power. But Rhea possesses qualities the sorcerer didn’t account for: resourcefulness born of a practical upbringing, compassion that allows her to see the other wives as allies rather than cautionary tales, and a fundamental bravery that has nothing to do with physical strength and everything to do with refusing to accept injustice even when acceptance would be easier. Rather than facing the tasks alone, Rhea begins rallying the imprisoned wives, recognizing that Lord Crevan’s greatest weakness is his assumption that victims won’t help each other, that fear and isolation will keep them compliant. The wives, meeting someone who sees them as people rather than objects or warnings, begin to remember their own agency, their own capacity for resistance. Together, this collection of women—dismissed, imprisoned, underestimated—start working toward the impossible: not just securing Rhea’s escape, but defeating the sorcerer entirely before he can bind another victim to his cursed household. ✨
What makes this a treasure: T. Kingfisher has created a darkly whimsical masterpiece that honors the bones of classic fairy tales while giving them new teeth and a beating heart. This is Bluebeard completely reimagined through a feminist lens that never feels preachy because it’s too busy being genuinely thrilling, often funny, and emotionally true. Rhea’s journey from powerless victim to determined survivor to leader of rebellion feels earned rather than handed to her, and the solidarity among the wives transforms what could be a solitary hero’s journey into something far more powerful—a testament to how collective action and mutual support can overthrow even magical tyranny. At $0.99, this is highway robbery in the reader’s favor, perfect for fans of Naomi Novik’s “Uprooted,” Alix E. Harrow’s “The Ten Thousand Doors of January,” or anyone who wants their fantasy to be both enchanting and quietly revolutionary. 🌟
Five dismembered bodies discovered along a desolate stretch of roadside, dumped in the middle of nowhere with the casual brutality that characterizes cartel executions. For Special Agent Garrett Mann, head of ARTEMIS—a specialized FBI task force dedicated to hunting down cartel-related killings across the Southwest—this scene is horrific but grimly familiar. He’s stood over dozens of similar crime scenes, each one a testament to the savage efficiency of drug cartel enforcement operations. The cartels use these displays as messages, warnings to anyone who might consider betrayal or interference, and Mann has become expert at reading the signatures in these brutal murders. The dismemberment patterns, the disposal methods, the geographic distribution—Mann and his team have been tracking these kills along thousands of miles of rural roads, following a trail that runs north and south in predictable corridors, mapping a pattern that speaks to systematic operations rather than random violence. 🚗
When the latest slaughter yields a key piece of evidence that doesn’t fit the established pattern—something small but significant that only someone with Mann’s deep knowledge of cartel methods would recognize as anomalous—the agent feels a surge of cautious optimism. After months of following this particular killing spree, tracking the geographic progression and analyzing the victim profiles, he believes he’s finally identified the killer, understood the operational structure, and positioned his team to make an arrest that could dismantle a significant piece of the cartel’s enforcement apparatus. Mann thinks he’s solved the case, thinks he’s about to close the file on dozens of murders and maybe save future victims from meeting the same fate. He briefs his superiors, prepares for the takedown, and allows himself a moment of professional satisfaction. That’s when everything he thinks he knows starts crumbling, when the nightmare truly begins, when Mann discovers that solving the mystery was never the challenge—understanding what he’s actually stumbled into is the real test. 🔍
The investigation takes Mann from a lakeside Minnesota mansion that seems wildly disconnected from Southwest cartel operations to an abandoned CIA black site in the New Mexico desert that officially doesn’t exist on any government records. Each new location, each piece of evidence, each connection he uncovers pulls him further from the straightforward cartel case he thought he was working. The kills aren’t random cartel enforcement—they’re too precise, too purposeful, following a logic that has nothing to do with drug territory or criminal retribution. As Mann digs deeper, pushing against resistance that comes from unexpected quarters, he realizes this isn’t the work of a lone serial killer or even a cartel hit squad. Someone is coordinating these murders across vast distances, someone with resources and authority that dwarf typical criminal organizations. The closer Mann gets to his supposed prey, the deadlier the stakes become, and not just for him—his team starts facing interference from agencies that should be helping, roadblocks appear from officials who should want this case solved, and Mann begins to suspect that someone powerful is actively working to prevent him from uncovering the truth. 🎯
The conspiracy Mann unravels operates at levels he never imagined possible, connecting threads between government agencies, criminal organizations, and power structures that most Americans assume are separate and oppositional. This isn’t a serial killer Mann is hunting—or rather, the serial killer is just the visible symptom of something vastly more dangerous. The murders Mann has been tracking aren’t about drugs or territory or even money in any conventional sense. They’re part of a scheme so audacious and far-reaching that exposing it would shake public faith in institutions people depend on. The stakes extend far beyond preventing the next massacre; what Mann has stumbled into involves national security implications, political corruption at the highest levels, and a conspiracy that depends on maintaining absolute secrecy. Mann finds himself in the nightmare scenario every law enforcement officer fears: he knows enough to understand the scope of the threat, but he’s operating beyond his authority, outmatched by opponents with unlimited resources, and increasingly uncertain who he can trust within his own agency. The only thing he knows for certain is that backing down isn’t an option—not when the body count keeps rising and he might be the only person positioned to stop whatever catastrophe this conspiracy is building toward. 💣
Why this grips from page one: Steven Konkoly is a master of the escalating conspiracy thriller, using the familiar framework of a serial killer investigation as a trapdoor into something exponentially more sinister. The beauty of this setup is watching Mann’s certainty dissolve as each answer reveals three more questions, each solution exposes a deeper problem, and the simple case he thought he understood transforms into a labyrinth of corruption that threatens everything he believes about justice and the institutions sworn to uphold it. For fans of Brad Thor, Vince Flynn, Mark Greaney, or anyone who loves thrillers where the real villain isn’t the killer but the system protecting him, Konkoly delivers that addictive combination of procedural authenticity, relentless pacing, and the satisfying complexity that comes from plots where nothing—and no one—is quite what they seem. 🎭
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