The Memory Stones: Forgiveness is a Journey in Time (Book One)
When Mase Winslow, the heir to a Civil War-era plantation is forced to almost kill his best friend, a slave named Spoon, he unconsciously brings about the demise of his beloved home.
As guilt and remorse overtake him, he seeks atonement through death on the battlefield. With the help of an ordinary-looking stone given to him by Spoon’s mother, he is transported through time. When he realizes he can redeem himself by altering his actions, he suddenly has hope. The reality-bending journey that ensues takes him to present-day New York City and then back to Civil War–era South Carolina, requiring him to navigate a myriad of desperate challenges.
With more than a century of guilt weighing him down, he battles himself, Yankee troops, nature’s elements, and a nemesis that follows him through time. Set against an ominous ticking clock counting toward a deadly showdown that could cost him the love of his life, all odds are stacked against him.
Podcast Reading:
Click here to listen to an interview with Mr. Pennington followed by a reading of the first chapter.
“Fetch the thunder stick!” said the old man, stretching his bony arm toward the pond. His splotchy, paper-thin palm unfolded a knobby finger that pointed across the shimmering surface to the silhouette of a large house hovering above the far bank.
Mase stood frozen in front of the smokehouse squeezing his crucifix, its edges digging into his palm. He looked into the black abyss of the man’s eyes with a plea of forgiveness. There was none to be given.
“I said fetch me the thunder,” the man roared, blood vessels bulging along his temples. He turned to an ogre of a man pacing in circles beside him. “Now!”
Mase jumped back, dodging the massive man who had been commanded to fulfill the task. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched him disappear into the darkness while he remained toe to toe with the old man bent on an act of revenge that would have devastating consequences.
Several breathless minutes later the ogre reappeared, huffing his way toward them and carrying a double-barreled shotgun.
“What’re you going to do?” Mase asked.
The man snatched the gun and hobbled to the front door.
He moved with him. “What’re you planning?”
“Delivering justice!” he said, pounding the entrance with the butt of the gun.
The door swung open, revealing a small, dark, windowless room filled with a half-dozen ham shanks, plucked fowl, and other assorted meats hanging from the ceiling’s large oak beams. Cutting knives, saws, and butcher cleavers hung from the walls. With a solitary candle lighting the room, one could barely make out the black man standing with his face against the opposite wall. His shackled hands were raised above his head, attached to chains running into the ceiling trusses. From a distance, he could have been mistaken for just another side of meat about to be processed.
The old man walked inside, slamming the door behind him.
Mase stared into the hardwood planks. He muttered to himself, dropped the crucifix, and barged inside to find the man holding the shotgun against the back of the black man’s head.
“Nooooo,” he yelled as he grabbed the gun.
“By God, boy, if you don’t let—”
“No, please—you can’t!”
The man glared at him, his chest heaving.
Mase pressed the gun barrel downward. “If it’s going to be done, I’m the one who has to do it.”
The man stepped back, panting, struggling to remain stable. “You shouldn’t even be here.”
“If justice has to be served, it has to come from me.”
The old man gritted his teeth, holding back the urge to finish what he had set out to do. “Here!” He rammed the weapon into his chest. “Do what you have to,” he said, slamming the door behind him.
The words echoed in Mase’s ears. Do what you have to.
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The Memory Stones: Righteous Love is a Narrow Path (Book Two)
After Mase Winslow travels back in time to post–Civil War South Carolina, he leaves behind his friend, Zoey Antonelli, to deal with the harsh realities of modern-day New York City alone. What he doesn’t know is that he’s also leaving her with the constant reminder of a hidden love she harbors for him.
Rather than fading, her feelings continue to grow over the next ten years, gradually pushing her toward an emotional cliff that could destroy her. As she struggles with the regret of not professing her love while he was present, she turns to a journal Mase left her. From its pages, she attempts to piece together an implausible life that would reunite the present with the past.
It is only when the power of the memory stones comes into play that such an impossibility becomes reality. Using the stones, and with love as her only objective, she sets off on a journey that will not only redefine what true love really is but also highlight the difficulties we must sometime endure to achieve it.
From out of the darkness, she awoke to another type of pain. The man in the burgundy jacket had her by the ankles and was dragging her across the gravel parking lot. She cried out for help as the jagged rocks raked across her back. The man dropped beside her, pulled out a bloody rag he had been using on his injured nose and jammed it in her mouth. When he hoisted her across his shoulder, she let out a muffled yell for help. Her head bounced against his back as the shoddy landscape of the Gator Lodge slowly gave way to dead branches and rotting foliage. Within several minutes dry land had transformed to swamp, and the man flung her to the ground. Her muted cries for help were cloaked by the thick croaking of bullfrogs in the backwaters of South Carolina, a mere hundred yards from the lodge.
The man knelt next to her, grabbed her face with one hand, and pinched her lips together. He leaned into her ear and hissed, “You messed with the wrong—”
A rustling from the direction of the lodge stopped him. Out of the darkness appeared the young girl from Room 10, towing behind her Zoey’s luggage with her handbag draped over the top. She pushed them next to the man in a sacrificial offering. “This is all she had.”
“You sure?” he barked.
“Yes, I’m sure,” she replied in a small voice.
Grabbing the luggage, he ripped open its zipper and began pulling out its contents. One by one he threw everything into the brackish water. “Nothing. What about the bag?”
“I-I didn’t check,” the girl said. She stole a quivering glance at Zoey that begged for forgiveness.
The man dove his hand into the canvas opening, groping for anything of value. “Jackpot,” he said, pulling out a small purse. Without opening it, he threw it to the girl. “Hold on to this.” He plunged back in. Back and forth he ran his hand, searching the inside. “Hmm, what’s this?” he said, fingering the hidden pocket she had fashioned for the one item that meant more to her than anything else. As he withdrew his fist, Zoey saw he held the memory stone. He turned it side to side, examining it, trying to attach some sort of worth to it. “You carry a rock?” He laughed, then turned to the girl. “You wanna make a necklace?” he said, tossing it to the side.
In a moment of clarity, Zoey realized her only hope lay beside her. As the man continued scouring her handbag, she inched her hand outward. Through the decaying leaves and mud, her fingers found the stone and slowly closed around it. With all her remaining strength she slammed it against his temple. The man reeled backwards then popped back up like a top, throwing his leg over her torso. Looking up, all she could see was his silhouette hovering above her, moonlight glinting off his gold teeth—and then flashing across the blade the girl had sliced into Zoey’s back. Down it came, plunging through her chest and into her heart. Within seconds, she was gone.
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The Memory Stones: True Sacrifice is Never Looking Back (Book Three)
A century and a half after the memory stone first transported him through time, Mase Winslow is once again subjected to its mystical powers as he is pulled from the love and safety of his Willow Creek plantation to come to the aid of his friend Zoey Antonelli.
Along with her new love, Boone Vanderson, they have been thrust forward in time only to be separated along the way, deposited onto the cruel streets of New York City. Stripped of her memory and without him having any knowledge of the twenty-first century, they struggle to survive. Death and destruction loom as a demon from their past joins forces with a villainous element in the present.
With greed and revenge at the heart of this unholy union, Zoey and Boone’s lives hang in the balance. The saga of the Winslow family and all those they love comes full circle as the memory stone reunites them in a battle of good against evil where true sacrifice is the only means to prevail.
On the night Boone and Zoey were transported to the future, Boone knocked Dag unconscious with a blow he hoped his nemesis would never wake from. If his need to be by Zoey’s side had been any less, he would have stopped to finish the job, but as he rushed to embrace his dying love, the thought of Dag recovering never crossed his mind.
Unfortunately, Dag’s senses, sluggish and hazy as they were, returned in just enough time for him to witness the miracle of the stone. Watching through the thin slits of his eyelids, he lay mesmerized as the silhouettes of the two figures at the end of the hall vanished into the ether.
Staggering to his feet, and with one shaky foot in front of the other, he slowly walked down the corridor. Bending down, he ran his pale fingers through a quarter-inch deep puddle of blood the diameter of a girl’s torso. It was warm, but there was no trace of the body from which it came. There were no long tracks of crimson for a forensic expert to measure or analyze the direction in which the body had been dragged. That didn’t matter. He knew for certain it was all from Zoey. And the two pieces of the stone she and Boone held in their hands were gone, reaffirming they were the instruments of the witch he knew her to be.
At his feet lay the remaining fragment of the stone, the remnant produced when he tried shooting the girl in the pink nightgown. She had held the stone that blocked his bullet from ending her life. Smaller than a third of the original stone, he picked it up, admiring it with a wicked smile, knowing that, with death as the catalyst to its powers, he too could be transported—to where, he did not care. All he knew was a life anywhere else was better than the hell he would be subjected to when Boss Tweed learned how he botched his one assignment.
Beyond that, he also continued hanging onto the bogus claims Zoey said the stone was able to conjure. According to her, the scalp the Indians had ripped from his skull could be restored and the powers of whoever was holding it at their time of death would be transferred to him. All he had to do was have his hand wrapped around the dying victim’s hand at the moment of their death. Suddenly his head began to throb along the temple Boone had smashed with his fist. He placed the stone against it, letting its coolness provide some temporary relief. As he rubbed the smooth side back and forth, gently massaging the side of his face, a faint moaning from down the hall emanated from the dining room. Mr. Alcott was waking to the nightmare around him.
“Shut up, you fool,” Dag yelled.
The moans persisted, rising with the muffled cries of a man who had just lost his wife in a gruesome knife attack.
“I said shut up or I’ll…” Dag suddenly crammed the stone into his pocket and rushed to the dining room, the scene where he butchered Alcott’s wife, the room in which he came so close to realizing the power of the memory stone. Still lying on the floor, strapped into the chair he had ordered him tied to, was the second piece of Dag’s morbid puzzle.
“Yessssss!” he hissed in joyous recognition of what fate had provided him. He had the stone and now he had his victim and soon—a new life, complete with the powers to be bestowed upon him just as Zoey prophesized for him.
“Alcott, my dear man, I believe I’m in need of your services,” he said, walking out to retrieve the pistol he used to kill Zoey. A moment later he was back in the room, kneeling behind him. He grabbed the back of the chair. “Here,” Dag grunted, hoisting him upright, “let’s get you ready so you can enjoy our little journey.”
Mr. Alcott squirmed, the gag in his mouth a wet slop of fabric drenched in sweat, tears, and saliva. He gurgled an inaudible plea. Dag ignored him as he prepared the components for the prescribed ritual that would send them both into the future.
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Rapture’s Rain
In the aftermath of the world’s most catastrophic event, Jason Stover finds himself alone and on the verge of suicide. His family, along with millions of others, has suddenly vanished without a trace, and the world as he knows it is starting to die. After a supernatural event, mysterious strangers begin to appear that may hold the key to his and the rest of mankind’s survival. The only question is will he be able to solve the mystery before time runs out. As the clock ticks down, he and his friends’ souls hang in the balance teetering between eternal damnation and ever-lasting life. Rapture’s Rain is a provoking and unique journey that puts faith to the test in the ultimate battle between good and evil.
At precisely 6:12 a.m. the next morning, a slow steady beam of light rolled across the Stovers’ backyard, in through the kitchen, and down the hallway toward where Jason still lay asleep next to the grandfather clock. Like every other sunny morning on Lake Royale, the sun quickly flooded the Stover household, ensured by their unobstructed eastern exposure to the lake.
When the light reached his eyes, his senses stirred for a split second, but not enough to wake him. His ordeal had taken its toll. He had tossed and turned the entire evening and was now completely out of it. It wasn’t until seven o’clock, when the grandfather clock began to chime, that he rolled over to avoid the sunlight’s increasing intensity.
On the third chime, the first memory of the previous day’s events flashed through his groggy mind. Still half asleep, the horrific storyline began to play out. It was only a dream he thought. But with every chime of the clock a new and more vivid detail appeared, jarring him back into consciousness.
By the time the seventh chime rang, he was wide awake. As he slowly pulled himself to his feet, he saw the pieces of what used to be a phone scattered across the room. Like a sledgehammer to the gut, the full weight of his situation hit him. He doubled over and a fresh wave of despair engulfed him. He wasn’t prepared yet to bear the burden of what had transpired, but he knew he had to gain his composure. His family needed him, and he needed them.
After grabbing a banana and a glass of water, he headed to the living room, where the TV was still playing from the afternoon before. Just as he expected, the news was continuing to override all other programming. The first channel to catch his eyes appeared to be broadcast from the depths of hell. The entire screen was filled with billowing smoke of unknown origin. As the camera pulled back, streaks of bright red and orange could be seen snaking their way through cracked earth, spewing a blizzard of ashes and soot. Jason absent-mindedly took a bite of his banana, transfixed on the hellish scene.
Suddenly, the camera shot changed to a reporter sitting in a news helicopter. As he struggled to be heard above the noise of the aircraft’s blades, Jason could see a small town that lay in ruin below.
“What lies beneath us,” yelled the reporter, “is just one of many small towns up and down the Washington and Oregon coastline that have been hit by a series of earthquakes since 1 a.m. this morning.”
As the camera zoomed out the window and to the town below, Jason could see that the red and orange streaks were actually streams of lava flowing through huge crevasses, burning through the streets and into a once-peaceful countryside. He could also see broken power lines, overturned cars, and decimated buildings. The scene made Jason’s heart ache, imagining the anguish the families of this town must feeling.
Action Packed End Time Adventure
“Rapture’s Rain by Lewis Pennington is an action-packed “end time” novel that added a different twist to your usual stories of the Rapture. I had a hard time putting this book down when I started reading it. The author did a great job of developing a storyline that was both easy to follow, yet full of twists and turns which kept me glued to the book. His detail and storytelling style made the story come alive as very believable and realistic.” – Larry B Gray (Verified Amazon Purchase Review)
Wonderful action-filled adventure
“Read this straight through. I couldn’t put it down for more than 15 minutes. Great character development and storyline without preaching too much. It gets the message across.” – Mandy Bryant (Verified Amazon Purchase Review)
I couldn’t put this book down!
“I started this book not knowing what to expect and was overwhelmed. The narration and descriptions are fabulous. The story is beautiful especially as it comes to be the definition of the title of the book. I have already recommended it to numerous people after reading it Sunday.” – A. Barnes (Verified Amazon Purchase Review)
A Must Read!!!
“This book is a must read. I could not put it down, it was so entertaining and well written. And what a great story line, its one of those books that you read and think about for the next 2 weeks! I have already bought 4 more copies for my family. Highly recommend!” – Dena Vammino (Verified Amazon Purchase Review)
Masterful novel from an expert author
“It is hard to believe that novice (but expert) author Lewis Pennington has penned his first book loosely based on the biblical Rapture. His writing is marvelous as the characters are expertly written, and at least for me, I could see and feel their emotions. His characters were so real it was like knowing them as one of your personal friends. His writing is smooth, professional and well constructed. I couldn’t stop reading as I wanted to find out what was going to happen next.” – PenMouse (Amazon Top Reviewer)