Welcome to the Christian Fiction Scavenger Hunt! If you’ve just discovered the hunt, be sure to start at Stop #1, and collect the clues through all the stops, in order, so you can enter to win one of our top 5 grand prizes!

• The hunt BEGINS on 10/23 at noon MST with Stop #1 at LisaTawnBergren.com.
• Hunt through our loop using Chrome or Firefox as your browser (not Explorer).
• There is NO RUSH to complete the hunt—you have all weekend (until Sunday, 10/26 at 11:59 MST)! So take your time, reading the unique posts along the way; our hope is that you discover new authors/new books and learn new things about them.
• Submit your entry for the grand prizes by collecting the CLUE on each author’s scavenger hunt post and submitting your answer in the Rafflecopter form at the final stop, back on Lisa’s site. Many authors are offering additional prizes along the way!

I’m Roseanna M. White, author of a slew of historical romances, along with some contemporary mysteries from Guideposts. My real life is full (I spent the last 15 years homeschooling, and now they’re both done–how did that happen???–and my daughter is a junior in college) but also very … ordinary. So I offset that by writing about things like spies and nobility and war and mayhem whenever I can. Many of my books have been set in the 1900-1920 range, but I’ve recently launched my first book set solely WW2…in Paris!

On a quiet street in Paris of 1940, there’s a quiet little library. A library filled with all the books that Germany banned and burned in the last seven years. A library whose key is turned over to the Nazis the hour they roll into Paris. But the Library of Burned Books has secrets stored within it–secrets put there by Corinne Bastien, who lives next door, yes…secrets the Allies need. And when Christian Bauer, the Nazi-appointed “library protector” arrives to dismantle Paris’s libraries, he sets up his headquarters in this quiet little library…hoping it can hide his secrets too.

Before researching for this book, my stance of book bans was kinda “meh.” I didn’t like them, but I also didn’t like the idea of “bad” books being readily available, especially for children. As I wrote The Collector of Burned Books and dove deep in the culture of censorship, my opinions got a LOT more defined. And while yes, we need to protect our children…we also have to prepare them to encounter ideas that are not their own. By the time they’re adults, they should be reading books that challenge their preconceived notions and stretch their mind–that’s the only way we ever come to understand our own beliefs in full.

As I looked up books banned by the Nazis, as well as books that have been banned in America through the ages, I was surprised to see some on the list. Because those books that were “too dangerous” before? Now they’re classics. Here’s a list of some that struck me. How many of these have you read? Answer in the comments for a chance to win my personal giveaway!

The Call of the Wild by Jack London

Relativity by Albert Einstein

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Ulysses by James Joyce

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbech

Catch 22 by Joseph Heller

Bambi: A Life in the Wild by Felix Salten

Here’s Your Critical Stop #6 Info:

If you’re interested, you can get a signed copy of The Collector of Burned Books from me right here (and shop for other fun bookish things too, including my Banned Books line!) or order on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Baker Book House, or Bookshop.org now. 

Clue to Write Down: a fire

Link to Stop #7, the Next Stop on the Loop: Karen Barnett’s site! (She’ll be giving away a copy of Through Water and Stone, which I had the privilege of reading for endorsement–it is SO GOOD!!!)

Special Giveaway!

But before you go, I’m offering a special prize!

One lucky winner with a US address will receive a signed copy of The Collector of Burned Books AND a “read dangerously” mug with the design featured above! If you’re international, you’re entered to a win a copy of The Collector of Burned Books from the online retailer of your choice.

(If the entry form is not showing above, you can enter here!)