Here are 100 books that Counted With the Stars fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’m a spiritual mutt. Raised with a variegated Christian background (Mom Charismatic, Dad Quaker, Grandparents Wesleyan), I rejected all things biblical and turned to Jack Daniels for Southern Comfort. In college I reconnected with a high school friend who demonstrated God was real by his changed life and showed the Bible’s concrete historical connections in a way I could understand. The words that had so confounded me as a child began to make sense. I dumped Jack Daniels, married that friend, and no longer needed Southern Comfort. Now, through research, study, and a little imagination, I write biblical novels, chug Living Water, and tell Bible stories to eight grandkids.
Though I write inspirational fiction, my true passion is research. In this fascinating and one-of-a-kind resource, not only did I discover the names and stories of pharaohs and their succession accounts but also the names and stories of the mothers, sisters, daughters, and wives who ruled alongside Egypt’s great men. When I began searching for the mysterious pharaoh’s daughter who pulled Moses from the Nile after an unnamed Pharaoh’s genocidal edict, I needed information on the often-overlooked women of Egypt. This complete family resource provided charts, lists, photos, and concise explanations of Egyptian history from the Early Dynastic Period and Old Kingdom through the Late and Ptolemaic Period.
This groundbreaking new book illuminates the lives of the kings, queens, princes and princesses of ancient Egypt, unravelling family relationships and exploring the parts they played in politics, cultural life and religion. It ranges from the dawn of Egyptian history, when only isolated glimpses are available of the royal family, through the vast progeny of Ramesses II, and ends with the fiendishly complicated - and blood-soaked - interconnections of the Ptolemies and Cleopatras.
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I’m a spiritual mutt. Raised with a variegated Christian background (Mom Charismatic, Dad Quaker, Grandparents Wesleyan), I rejected all things biblical and turned to Jack Daniels for Southern Comfort. In college I reconnected with a high school friend who demonstrated God was real by his changed life and showed the Bible’s concrete historical connections in a way I could understand. The words that had so confounded me as a child began to make sense. I dumped Jack Daniels, married that friend, and no longer needed Southern Comfort. Now, through research, study, and a little imagination, I write biblical novels, chug Living Water, and tell Bible stories to eight grandkids.
I always start my research at a library. I find the shelves on Egyptian history, grab a stack of books, plop down on the floor, and read until I can’t feel my legs. There’s never a shortage of Egyptology resources, but why must the scholars always disagree? Only by reading widely can I find a golden thread of agreement across the many sources. Oftentimes, a particular scholar will emerge as the leading expert on a particular time period and appear in a majority of quoted material and/or bibliographies. The Oxford History of Ancient Egyptwas both easy to understand and included interesting details while also following the consensus of the best New Kingdom scholars.
The essays and illustrations in this history portray the emergence and development of the distinctive civilization of the ancient Egyptians, from their prehistoric origins to their incorporation into the Roman Empire, covering the period from around 7000 BCE to 311. The authors outline the principal sequence of political events, including detailed examinations of the three so-called "intermediate periods" which were previously regarded as "dark ages" and are only now beginning to be better understood. Against the backdrop of the rise and fall of ruling dynasties, this book also examines cultural and social patterns, including stylistic developments in art and literature.…
I’m a spiritual mutt. Raised with a variegated Christian background (Mom Charismatic, Dad Quaker, Grandparents Wesleyan), I rejected all things biblical and turned to Jack Daniels for Southern Comfort. In college I reconnected with a high school friend who demonstrated God was real by his changed life and showed the Bible’s concrete historical connections in a way I could understand. The words that had so confounded me as a child began to make sense. I dumped Jack Daniels, married that friend, and no longer needed Southern Comfort. Now, through research, study, and a little imagination, I write biblical novels, chug Living Water, and tell Bible stories to eight grandkids.
Because I planned to write a second book about Moses, understanding the science behind the biblical plagues was important to approximate the timeline for both Moses’s return to Egypt (from exile in Midian) and to determine the Pharaoh of the Exodus. Humphreys is a scientist who gives fascinating and feasible explanations for every one of the ten plagues mentioned in the Bible; however, he in no way discounts their supernatural origin. This book, perhaps more than any other I’ve read, helped illustrate that God always allows room for doubt—as was evidenced by using scientifically viable reasons for the plagues. But He invites us to see His miracles and believe.
Did the Red Sea really part before the Israelites? Why didn't the fire consume the Burning Bush? What was the Manna in the Wilderness? The Miracles of Exodus explores the truth about these and all the other Exodus mysteries, including the precise locations of the Red Sea Crossing and the route of the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt 3,000 years ago. This investigative tour de force explains the Ten Plagues, the true location of Mount Sinai, the ultimate crossing of the Jordan and much more. Colin Humphreys, a distinguished British scientist, uses physics, astronomy, biology and other scientific resources…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I’m a spiritual mutt. Raised with a variegated Christian background (Mom Charismatic, Dad Quaker, Grandparents Wesleyan), I rejected all things biblical and turned to Jack Daniels for Southern Comfort. In college I reconnected with a high school friend who demonstrated God was real by his changed life and showed the Bible’s concrete historical connections in a way I could understand. The words that had so confounded me as a child began to make sense. I dumped Jack Daniels, married that friend, and no longer needed Southern Comfort. Now, through research, study, and a little imagination, I write biblical novels, chug Living Water, and tell Bible stories to eight grandkids.
When I started writing biblical historical fiction in the early 2000s, I found only one or two novels about Moses. Shadow Women was especially helpful because it spanned Moses’s whole life, which meant it also encompassed the biblical narrative from Exodus to Deuteronomy. It was like Cliff Notes for four Books of the Bible! As my writing friendships have expanded over the past two decades, I’ve come to know Angela Hunt personally and discovered that she holds a PhD in Biblical Studies, which gives me even more confidence in the historical and biblical accuracy of her many biblical novels. She continues to be one of my favorite authors.
The three main women in Moses's life narrate his dramatic story from their perspectives. Miryam, his seven-year-old sister, and Merytamon, his 14-year-old adoptive mother, cover his early years as an Egyptian prince. Nine-year-old Zipporah, his future wife, tells of Moses' time with her father, a priest, and their family. After God reveals himself to Moses, Miryam recounts the liberation of the Jewish people and their escape from Egypt, and Zipporah and Miryam recall the years in the wilderness. The animosity and jealousy Miryam feels for both Merytomon and Zipporah flood the narrative, poisoning their happiness, but Moses…
I’m a writer who has traveled the world in real life and traveled through time in my research and imagination. In the past dozen years, I’ve researched historical women of the Bible for my own novels and have come to realize that women of the ancient world were much like women of today. Biblical women had dreams and fell in love. They worried about their children, politics, and the world around them. They wished for security and happiness just as we do. I have a special regard for historical fiction that brings these ancient women to life—honoring their lives and their struggles.
I loved Miriam—one of many of Mesu Andrew’s novels of Old Testament women—because this aged woman brings a fresh perspective to the well-known story of the Exodus from Egypt. Her lived experience from slavery to freedom—and from despair to hope—as she searches for the God of her brother, Moses, is both familiar and utterly new. Mesu Andrews weaves a beautiful tapestry of a story that breathes new and fascinating life into a familiar story.
The Hebrews call me prophetess, the Egyptians a seer. But I am neither. I am simply a watcher of Israel and the messenger of El Shaddai. When He speaks to me in dreams, I interpret. When He whispers a melody, I sing.
At eighty-six, Miriam had devoted her entire life to loving El Shaddai and serving His people as both midwife and messenger. Yet when her brother Moses returns to Egypt from exile, he brings a disruptive message. God has a new name – Yahweh – and has declared a radical deliverance for the Israelites.
No matter how you read it, the Bible is a strange book. It weaves together beautiful narratives and deadly-dull genealogies; uplifting messages with passages that many today find ethically repulsive. Yet it gained an extraordinary authority, in a predominantly pre-literate society. The question of how this happened has been an intellectual and scholarly preoccupation of mine for decades, and as a professor at Brown University I seek to bring my students and readers into this very foreign world in order to open their eyes to new possibilities in the present.
Who Wrote the Bible? is my go-to book for explaining to undergraduates the classic Documentary Hypothesis, that is, the theory that describes how humans wrote and edited the Bible. Friedman’s style is clear and engaging, and he frames his explanation as an academic mystery. I (with other scholars) don’t always agree with his conclusions, but they responsible and worth considering. My students regularly note that this was their favorite book of the semester.
A much anticipated reissue of Who Wrote the Bible?—the contemporary classic the New York Times Book Review called “a thought-provoking [and] perceptive guide” that identifies the individual writers of the Pentateuch and explains what they can teach us about the origins of the Bible.
For thousands of years, the prophet Moses was regarded as the sole author of the first five books of the Bible, known as the Pentateuch. According to tradition, Moses was divinely directed to write down foundational events in the history of the world: the creation of humans, the worldwide flood, the laws as they were handed…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
No matter how you read it, the Bible is a strange book. It weaves together beautiful narratives and deadly-dull genealogies; uplifting messages with passages that many today find ethically repulsive. Yet it gained an extraordinary authority, in a predominantly pre-literate society. The question of how this happened has been an intellectual and scholarly preoccupation of mine for decades, and as a professor at Brown University I seek to bring my students and readers into this very foreign world in order to open their eyes to new possibilities in the present.
Although this is my fun pick, it is also a serious book that I use in the classroom. There have been countless attempts by modern authors to retell biblical stories. Horn’s book creatively transfers the biblical story of Joseph and his brothers to the modern period, with a feminist twist. This book is engaging and coherent enough that it can be read and enjoyed without any knowledge of the Bible or Jewish history, although such knowledge makes it all the better!
Software prodigy Josie Ashkenazi has invented an application that records everything its users do. When she visits the Library of Alexandria as a tech consultant, she is abducted in Egypt's postrevolutionary chaos with only a copy of the philosopher Maimonides' famous work to anchor her-leaving her jealous sister Judith free to take over her life. A century earlier, Cambridge professor Solomon Schechter arrives in Egypt, hunting for a medieval archive hidden in a Cairo synagogue. Their stories intertwine in this spellbinding novel of how technology changes memory and how memory shapes the soul.
Since 7th grade, I’ve been reading and researching about ancient civilizations like Greece, the Mayans, Incans, and of course, Egypt, yet I never thought I’d write a book, much less a trilogy set thousands of years ago. While researching rebellions for another novel, I found the Great Egyptian Revolt of 200 BCE, as well as Ankhmakis’s story. Given my lifelong love of ancient mythologies, I spent the next two years collecting books about ancient Egypt. These books are but a small sampling I collected during that time in my life, and I’m so glad to share them with you.
If you read A God Against the Gods, you have to read Return to Thebes.
For my part, the descriptions of Luxor and Thebes were key to writing my book, but I also needed to know how this dynasty ended. Besides, finally King Tut has his say.
Moreover, I loved the introduction of Seti and his son, for the dynasty they created after Tut’s fall is one that still captures the imagination of Egyptologists and fans alike.
My family lived in an American camp in Saudi Arabia when I was young, and we traveled extensively. I’ve always loved ancient cultures, from our first international trip to Greece when I was six. The two months I spent in Mexico and Central America as a young adult inspired my first novel for young people, The Well of Sacrifice. But Egypt has long held a special place in my heart. The mummies and pyramids grab a child’s attention. The fact that these people were so different from us – and yet so similar in other ways – keeps that fascination going. Stories about ancient Egypt never get old!
Kids will have great fun diving into these projects, including games, jewelry, masks, clothing, statues, and recipes.
Most projects have simple and inexpensive materials, making them suitable for classroom projects as well. Put aside the book learning for a while and have fun with food, crafts, and games! There’s nothing like eating something from an ancient culture to help us understand that these were real people.
Royal jubilees, towering pyramids, face painting, and jewelry making? The sky's the limit when you spend the day in ancient Egypt! Picture this: You get out of bed and, as you go to brush your teeth, you suddenly realize that you've traveled back in time over 4,500 years to ancient Egypt. The sun is shining, the Nile River is almost flooding, and everywhere you look, humongous pyramids are being erected. You have a strong hunch that it's going to be a truly amazing day. You'll spend the day with a family in the land of Giza during the Fourth Dynasty…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
As a historian of feminism, I am always on the lookout for sources that reveal women’s voices and interpretation of experiences often imagined as belonging primarily to men. Whether erudite travelogue, personal journey of discovery, or sensationalist narrative of adventure and exploration, books written by women traveling on their own were among the most popular writings published in the Victorian era. Often aimed at justifying the expansion of woman’s proper “sphere,” these books are perhaps even more enthralling to the contemporary reader —since they seem to defy everything we think we know about the constrained lives of women in this era. In addition to illuminating the significant roles that women played in the principal conflicts and international crises of the nineteenth century, these stories of women wading through swamps, joining military campaigns, marching across deserts, up mountains, and through contested lands often armed only with walking sticks, enormous determination, and sheer chutzpah, never fail to fascinate!
Marking a turning point in women’s travel writing and scholarly publications, British artist, writer, and Egyptologist, Amelia Edwards, brought unparalleled expertise and knowledge of Egyptian antiquities to her narrative, in the process helping to found the modern study of Egyptology. Written by a gifted writer and accomplished novelist, her book follows her trip up the Nile River to investigate some of the world’s most important ancient archeological sites and is beautifully illustrated with her own watercolors as well as witty, insightful stories of everyday life in nineteenth-century Egypt.
As enthralling as any work of fiction, A Thousand Miles up the Nile is the quintessential Victorian travel book.
In 1873, Amelia B. Edwards, a Victorian gentlewoman, spent the winter visiting the then largely unspoiled splendors of ancient Egypt. An accurate and sympathetic observer, she brings nineteenth-century Egypt to life. A Thousand Miles up the Nile was an instant hit in 1876, and is received with equal enthusiasm by modern readers.
Fans of Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody Emerson mystery series will see similarities between the two Amelias. More importantly, A Thousand Miles up the Nile provides a wealth of background…
