A fascinating, well researched, and very ambitious effort. The story captures the immense wealth, of Babylon a long with world building grounded in history.

The novel does have its insane parts. A cat with a gun, naked witches, and trickery. From the insanity to a tender narrative of the fate of Judas, and Margarita

Lux by Elizabeth Cook – a retelling of Books 1 & 2 Samuel in the Hebrew Bible, the story of King David, how it applied to King Henry VIII, and poet Thomas Wyatt

I really enjoy biblical fiction, especially about the Jewish bible. I think the stories are great, interesting and, I hear, even teach a lesson or two. Most of the biblical fiction books I read were pretty good, some took many liberties, others didn’t but I have to say I enjoyed most of them (it is unfortunate that most of the ones I enjoyed were never translated into English). Many people miss the point of the bible, in my opinion – they either view it as literal history (which is a recent phenomena of about 100 years or so), or as a comic-book type superhero drama, or both. That is too bad since these wonderful stories are the base of which we built our society on (whether you believe them or not doesn’t matter), however over the centuries they have been bastardized to support one agenda or another, when actually they support none. At the time of this post, the books below were free or $0.99 – please check before downloading. Authors: If you’d like your book to be fea­tured on Tight­wad Tues­days please email me. In the Beginning (Holey Hullabaloo) by Michael Goldsberry A humorous retelling of Genesis from Eve’s pole dancing to…

Article first published as Book Review: Queenmaker: A Novel of King David’s Queen by India Edghill on Blogcritics. About: Queenmaker: A Novel of King David’s Queen by India Edghill is considered to be biblical fiction. I have studied the bible (both Jewish and Christian) and do enjoy biblical fiction very much. 384 pages Publisher: Picador; First Edition edition (November 2002) Language: English ISBN-10: 0312289197 My rating for Queenmaker – 3 Buy this book in paper for­mat through the Man of la Book Affil­i­ate Account More books by India Edghill Thoughts: I enjoyed India Edghill’s (website) Delilah: A Novel (book review) very much so I figured I’ll pick up her novel Queenmaker as a follow-up. Queenmaker is a biblical fiction first person narrative of Michal, King David’s first wife (out of several) and the one to hold the title of Queen. The book follows the biblical books of Samuel and II Samuel from Michal’s perspective; from her humble beginning as a daughter of Saul, a humble farmer, through his ascension to king, wars and madness. After marrying her father’s harper / war hero David she helps him escapes her father and for her help gets sold to another man until David’s army goes back to reclaim /…

Melachim Gimmel by Yochi Brandes (מלכים ג- יוכי ברנדס) a fascinating book attempting to turn some of the Bible stories on their heads giving a new perspective.

The female characters are drawn very nicely, but the males seemed to be a bit flat . That’s too bad because Xerxes, Mordechai and Haman are fascinating

Pearl in the Sand is a fascinating book, the biblical characters of Rahab, Salmone, Joshua, Ezra and others are skillfully brought to life by Tessa Afshar

This attempt at biblical fiction not a re-telling of the story of Samson, but a complete overhaul of the familiar story – a re-imagining if you will.