The Legend of Sheba - Rise of a Queen

Zusatztext "Impressively well written and compellingly entertaining from beginning to end." Informationen zum Autor Tosca Lee is the award-winning New York Times bestselling author of The Progeny , Firstborn , Iscariot , The Legend of Sheba , Demon: A Memoir , Havah: The Story of Eve , and the Books of Mortals series with New York Times bestseller Ted Dekker. She received her BA in English and International Relations from Smith College. A lifelong adventure traveler, Tosca makes her home in the Midwest with her husband and children. Klappentext Inheriting her father's rich throne at a great personal loss, a new Queen of Sheba finds her nation's trade routes threatened by new alliances and undertakes a daring journey to win over a brash new king of Israel.The Legend of Sheba ONE My mother, Ismeni, was born under the glimmer of the Dog Star, when men become disoriented by its light. They said she enchanted my father, that he made her his consort with a clouded mind. No king would choose a wife from his own tribe when he could strengthen alliance with another. But I saw the way their gazes followed her whenever she appeared in the palace porticoes, their conversations drifting to suspended silence until she passed from sight. On the rare occasion that she took her seat beside Father’s in the Hall of Judgment, the chamber swelled like a tide drawn by the darkened moon. Bronze-skinned with brows like dove’s wings and lips for whispering prayers, my mother was the most exquisite thing in all of Saba. The trickle of rain over the highland terraces couldn’t match the music of her beaded hems nor the best frankincense of Hadramawt compete with her perfume. Drowsing on her sofa in the hot afternoon, I would twine my fingers with hers and admire the turquoise of her rings. I hoped my hands and feet would be as slender as hers. It was all I hoped; it never occurred to me that any other aspect of her beauty might be granted a mortal twice on this earth. Many days we received gifts from my father: rare citrus imported from the north, sweet within their bitter rinds. Songbirds and ivory combs from across the narrow sea. Bolts of fine Egyptian linen, which my mother had made into gowns for me to match her own. But my greatest treasures were the songs she sang like lullabies murmured against my ear. The ritual prayers she taught me as we knelt before her idols, the sweet waft of incense perfuming her hair. Never once did she chide me for clinging to her when she donned the robes of the thing called “queen.” Never once when she went to my father at night was she not curled around me again by morning. Beyond the palace, Saba sprawled from the sheer edge of the coastal range to the foot of the desert waste. But I was content that my world stretched no farther than my mother’s chamber. In the evenings I sat before her jewelry chest and adorned my ears with lapis, my shoulders weighed down with necklaces as she reclined by her table. It was covered in gold, a glowing thing in the low light of the lamp that seemed to gild anything near it—the side of my mother’s face, the silver cup in her hand. And then I would dance as she clapped her hands, bracelets chiming on my ankles—the dance of the monsoon rain running through the wadi ravines, and the gentle sprinkles of summer coaxing millet from the winter-brown earth. Of the highland ibex, my arms curved over my head like great crescent horns, and the lions that stalked them, which always made her laugh. And then she would leap to her feet and join me, the tiers of carneli...

Product details

• Authors: Tosca Lee
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 31.05.2015
• EAN: 9781451684087
• ISBN: 978-1-4516-8408-7
• No. of pages: 327
• Dimensions: 140 mm x 216 mm x 19 mm
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature