Virtual Book Tour: The Angel Scroll

 

THE ANGEL SCROLL

Penelope Holt

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

GENRE:  Spiritual Romance, Mystery/Thriller

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

BLURB:

 

ONE ANCIENT PROPHECY, TWO HEARTBROKEN LOVERS, AND A WORLDWIDE SCAVENGER HUNT FOR THREE MIRACULOUS PAINTINGS.

 

After her husband’s death, New York artist Claire Lucas has baffling dreams and waking visions as she channels an enigmatic and healing painting of a holy man in India at the deathbed of a young woman. When widowed antiquarian Richard Markson announces that Claire’s canvas is one-third of three paintings prophesied by the Angel Scroll, a recently discovered Dead Sea parchment, she is pulled into an international scavenger hunt to find the stolen scroll and the paintings it predicts.

 

As she pursues the paintings with Richard across historic and holy sites in America, Israel, and Europe, Claire encounters a series of remarkable teachers. A Buddhist, a Benedictine monk, and a professor of early goddess worship all provide rich explanations for the artist’s compelling and perplexing psychic experiences — until she assembles the incredible triptych and deciphers its inspirational message for the modern world.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

EXCERPT:

In Benares, India, the sweltering night dragged on. Moonlight slid through the bedroom window and bathed the young, Christlike figure who sat cross-legged on the floor. Only a loincloth covered his slender hips, and his long, coarse hair was coiled in a topknot on his crown. He’d been watching the young woman on the low bed for hours. She was feverish, her breathing shallow, as she squinted at him now through half- closed lids. Her husband held her hand and shot the young man a pleading look. “Please let her live. I’m a rich man. I can pay you. I can help the poor of Benares, the poor of India.”

 

“To thwart death is not to conquer it,” the young master said, and the husband buried his head in the bed’s embroidered cover. In a single, fluid movement, the holy man rose and stroked his host’s bent head, His long, graceful fingers raking the dark hair, slick with perfumed oil, revealing a channel of pale, moist scalp.

 

Beyond the bedroom, in the narrow hallway, the master found his three companions propped against a wall and dozing. He tapped the closest with a calloused foot, and one by one the sleeping men awoke. “Is she well now?” the tall one asked, stretching.

 

“She will be dead come dawn,” his master whispered, as the four men stepped into the dusty and deserted Indian night.

 

The phone rang. Claire woke up and realized her face was wet. She’d been crying again. She eyed the clock—9 a.m. She cleared her throat, picked up the phone, and tried to sound awake. “Hello?”

 

“You still sleeping?” Claire held the phone away from her ear to stop Deirdre Vetch’s whine from piercing her brain. “You’re coming to the gallery to talk about the painting, right? We must talk.” Deirdre’s verbal pummeling began.

 

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

 

Penelope Holt was born and educated in England and now lives in New York. She is a novelist, playwright, business writer, and marketing executive, whose work has been performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, York Arts Center, and New York’s American Folk Theater. In addition to writing fiction,  The Angel Scroll, and The Apple, based on the controversial Herman Rosenblat Holocaust romance, Holt is a prolific writer, editor, and co-author of non-fiction, including Business Intelligence at Work A Personal Operating System for Career Success, Singing God’s Work, the story of the Harlem Gospel Choir, and many other works. She is married with two children.

 

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Angel-Scroll-Prophecy-Destiny-Novel-ebook/dp/B0D56KD3N5/ref=monarch_sidesheet_title

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

INTERVIEW:

What are four things you can’t live without?

Aside from the big things like family and friends, the four more mundane things that I can’t live without are my fresh coffee in the morning. My blue Creuset where I make my favorite soups, stews, and beef bourguignon. My “cherries in the snow” red lipstick, and my sweater coats that I keep in a modest but life-changing walk-in closet, which mercifully replaced the nightmare wire racks I had before.

What is your favorite television show?

I like all the design shows on HGTV that are packed with good ideas on how to spruce up house and yard.

If you could be any character, from any literary work, who would you choose to be? Why?

Elizabeth Bennet from “Pride & Prejudice” by Jane Austen, because she gets to keep herself and still get the guy. Because she finds a true and principled love when everyone around her is settling for the expedient and transactional. Because she is independent and smart and eventually is recognized and rewarded for her true worth.

I also love a later version of Elizabeth Bennet—Bridget Jones from “Bridget Jones’s Diary”, which echoes the original story but with more warmth and humor.

What have you got coming soon for us to look out for?

In a real change of pace from “The Angel Scroll”, I have a romance novel coming out in January with Inkspell Publishing titled “Polly Wants a Lover”. It’s part of a series I’m writing, and it’s a lighter, more straightforward romance about a talented dancer who gives up a successful career to lose herself in marriage to a man she discovers is a serial cheater. She sets out to reclaim her life, her career, and to find a new love she can trust.

What books or authors have most influenced your own writing?

I studied English Literature at University, so I am steeped in 19^th and 20^th classics and European greats like Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, The Bronte sisters, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Thomas Hardy. Also American writers, Henry James, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, John Updike, John Irving, “The Human Stain” by Philip Roth, and Sylvia Plath. So many.

I was very inspired by “White Oleander” by Janet Fitch, and Gillian Flynn of “Gone Girl” fame. I also loved Amor Towles’ “A Gentleman in Moscow.”

 

GIVEAWAY INFORMATION

Enterto win a $25 Amazon/BN GC - a Rafflecopter giveaway