What’s New in the Cross Reference Library? Christian Suspense in Orange

The Mermaid in the Basement - It’s 1857, and everything is a stake for Serafina Trent. A woman of means…but not the typical Victorian lady who feels her place is to be seen and not heard. When her brother’s most recent female dalliance, a beautiful actress, is found murdered, all evidence points to him. Especially since the actress had just rejected him in a most public manner. Now everyone believes Clive is headed for the gallows. Everyone, that is, but Serafina. Determined to prove her brother’s innocence, Serafina finds herself working with unlikely allies—including Dylan Tremayne, a passionate storyteller and actor with a criminal past. This novel will hold fans of mystery and history spellbound until the very last page. 

Betrayed - Deadlier fires seethe beneath the tenuous calm of a nation recovering from brutal civil war. Anthropologist Vicki Andrews is researching Guatemala’s “garbage people” when she stumbles across a human body. Curiosity turns to horror as she uncovers no stranger, but an American environmentalist—Vicki’s only sister, Holly. With authorities dismissing the death as another street crime, Vicki begins tracing Holly’s last steps. A pilgrimage leading from slum squalor to the breathtaking and endangered cloud forests of the Sierra de las Minas Biosphere. But every unraveled thread raises more questions. What betrayal connects Holly’s murder, the recent massacre of a Mayan village, and the long-ago deaths of Vicki’s own parents? Nor is Vicki the only one demanding answers. Before her search reaches its startling end, the conflagration has spilled across international borders where powerful sectors have far too much at stake to allow Vicki Andrews to expose long-buried truth. With no one turning out to be who they’d seemed, who can Vicki trust and who should she fear? A politically relevant tale of international intrigue and God’s redemptive beauty and hope. 

When the Lion Roars - When a sixteen-year-old girl is abducted into slavery in southern Sudan, her future depends on the unlikely partnership of three individuals who are distrustful of each other. Dr. Larson Kerr, American physician; Paul Farid, an Arab-born Christian; and Colonel Ben Alier, a commander in the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army, have little in common except their individual hopes for the people of Sudan. But when slave traders take Ben’s sister, these three must find a way to overcome their fears and prejudices if there’s to be any hope of rescue. Award-winning author DiAnn Mills weaves a moving and unforgettable novel about the redemptive power of sacrifice.