Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, other online book sellers, and local bookstores as special order.

Must the secrets we hide destroy our hope for a future?

For a gladiator slave, each time you step on the sand, it’s kill or die. When Ursus decides to follow Jesus, he must choose to die the next time he’s ordered to fight…or run away. He runs, taking again his childhood name, Matti. But he isn’t just trying to escape. He’s running to Thessalonica, where he hopes to find other Christians like the woman who led him to faith.

When Felicia’s new husband, Falco, almost kills her in a fit of rage, her uncle won’t help her end the marriage with his business partner. He will send her to her sister in Thessalonica, but only if she tells no one she plans to divorce Falco and demand her dowry back before she gets there. When Matti interrupts a robbery too late to save Felicia’s money for traveling by sea, he offers to bodyguard and escort her overland to their mutual destination.

After Matti risks everything to save her from Falco’s assassins, Felicia fears taking the danger to her sister’s family. When his Christian friends take them in, she discovers the deepest desires of her heart. But will the secrets of Matti’s past make a future together impossible?

Light in the Empire Series: Dangerous times, difficult friendships, lives transformed by forgiveness and love

Hope’s Reward is the ninth volume in the Light in the Empire series, which follows the interconnected lives of the members of five Roman families during the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian. The eleven novels of the series will take you around the Empire, from Germania and Britannia to Thracia, Dacia, and Judaea and, of course, to Rome itself.

Important aspects of Roman history for each can be found in the short articles at the end of each novel linked here and in longer articles at Carol Ashby’s Roman history website: Life in the Roman Empire: Historical Fact and Fiction.