Christian Books I Actually Like

I had a discussion with some friends the other day about why I don’t like most Christian fiction, and ever since I’ve been thinking about the Christian fiction I do like.

The Treasure of Timbuktu by Catherine Palmer

This one was later republished, with a much less interesting cover, as “A Kiss of Adventure”, but I’ve always preferred the original title just because it’s the one I first knew it as.

Tillie Thornton is a botanist living in Africa trying to get a grant to plant trees and study ways of growing them in the desert and stop the ever-encroaching Sahara from taking over more grazing/farming land. One day in the market, just as she’s been complaining to Mama Hannah, the African woman who raised her and her brother and sisters, that nothing interesting ever happens to her, a man on a camel tries to kidnap her and she’s saved by Graeme, a rakish man in a battered jeep who looks like a pirate and claims to know why the man on the camel wants her. What follows is an adventure through Mali, piecing together a riddle from a hundred years ago and trying to stay a step ahead of the Tuareg tribe pursuing Tillie, the “tree planting woman” who a tribal legend says will lead them to treasure.

Monday’s Child by Linda Chaikin

Christa is beautiful, blonde, and models for her family’s jewelry store ads. When she first meets Mossad agent Jorden Keller he’s disguised as a Texas cowboy-turned-movie-agent cliche and neither of them forms a very good first impression. But when Christa learns some disturbing secrets about her family Jorden is the only one she can trust, even if he still thinks she was in on the secret all along.

Thursday’s Child by Linda Chaikin

After a year of marriage to Garret Holden, Paulette is sure their life together will be perfect. Then a misunderstanding leads to a bitter separation, until Paulette’s uncle in Greece sends word that Garret is there, wounded and being hunted by German agents. Unsure of the reception that awaits her, Paulette sets out to find her missing husband and learn the truth about the family she never knew.

I hadn’t read Mary Stewart yet when I read these two books, but there are elements to them that appealed to me for the same reasons that Mary Stewart appealed a few years later – the romance is about more than just “you’re hot and helping me get away from the bad guys, let’s make out”, and the settings are places like Greece and Switzerland, which makes you want to take a vacation and have an adventure of your own. I won’t say that they’re perfect – Linda Chaikin has a habit of using words that don’t quite mean what she thinks they mean – but I really like them.

Arabian Winds, Lions of the Desert, and Valiant Hearts by Linda Chaikin

I can’t recommend this series as wholeheartedly as I’d like, since large parts of it were copied from a book called Death in Kashmir by M.M. Kaye, but in high school I didn’t know that and I thought it was all just wonderful. And even now that I do know, I can’t bring myself to shun them on principle. The story might not be completely original, but what’s not to like? Romance, spies, danger, and Cairo on the verge of World War 1…these books have it all. When I was 16 or so, Allison and Bret’s romance was the standard I held everything else up to.

Allison is a nurse in Egypt, taking a short holiday before returning to the medical missionary boat her aunt sails up and down the Nile to provide care to the villagers. Awoken one night by a strange sound, she goes out to investigate and winds up smack in the middle of a ring of spies who now think she has the information they’re looking for. Trying to figure out who is on which side, Allison encounters a disturbingly attractive but emotionally cold German Colonel named Brent Holman…or is he really the English Bret Holden she was told to look for?

Waterfall by Lisa T. Bergren

I’ve just started this one, so maybe I shouldn’t be recommending it yet, but so far it’s really good, and I can’t help myself.

Gabriella is in Italy with her sister and their archaeologist mother when she decides to explore one of the Etruscan tombs they’re investigating and comes back out to find herself 700 years in the past, in the middle of a battle. With no idea which side to trust, Gabi has to hope that Marcello, the knight who wins the battle and takes her to his castle, was the good guy, and try to figure out what happened to her sister, who was right there in the tomb with her until she suddenly disappeared, and how to get back home.