Teaser Tuesdays/First Chapter First Paragraph - Queen of Sheba

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Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by  Jenn at Books and Beat. To play along, just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two "teaser" sentences from somewhere on that page
• Be careful not to include spoilers!
• Share the title and author, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR lists if they like your teasers!

She didn't wait for them to recover their senses and rise, but lifted her skirt and hurried from the room with all of her women following behind. She had proposed something more daring than the bravest men of Sheba even imagined. There was no turning back now; she would have to go through with the venture.

~Queen of Sheba by Roberta Kells Dorr, page 38

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First Chapter/First Paragraph/Tuesday Intros is a weekly link-up hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea. To participate, share the first paragraph (or two) of a book you're reading, or thinking about reading soon.

   It was the annual dry season and the first of the caravans had arrived in Jerusalem from the south. On hearing the news, Solomon with his son and a few of his friends retired to the more casual, tentlike quarters built on the roof of his new palace. This was an ideal place to view the varied assortment of bobbles and oddities with some real treasures brought from distant lands.

   The traders would go on to Hazor and then Damascus, where they sold most of their wares, but in Jerusalem they had always found Solomon to be one of their best customers. He knew quality and was not reluctant to pay high prices for an item he happened to like. However, now that his ships had made a successful trip down the Red Sea to Punt, the traders were afraid he would no longer buy from them.

Queen of Sheba by Roberta Kells Dorr

Here's the blurb:

In Queen of Sheba, Roberta Kells Dorr has woven historical and archaeological research with age-old legend to create a riveting tale of ancient plots and passions.

This stirring and epic account of a pagan queen's search for truth and love paints a captivating portrait of a woman struggling with her passions and responsibilities while it brings to life the ancient Middle East. Dorr tells of a beautiful, intelligent, and independent queen who constantly battles the priests and high lords of her kingdom who resent being ruled by a woman. Bilqis, the queen of Sheba, is a woman as modern as her story is ancient.

Disillusioned by her own religion, under pressure to marry but finding no suitor who meets her own high standards, and disturbed by the effect of Solomon's new fleet of ships on Sheba's precious trade routes, Bilqis travels to Israel to meet the legendary Hebrew king and divert a needless and costly war.

Bilqis is a woman who longs for love but is reluctant to forsake her independence, aware that she has much to lose if she makes the wrong choice. In Solomon, to her surprise, she finds both love and a new faith - the covenant between man and woman and the covenant between humanity and God. But she is still too independent to let anyone become close to her. Also, she must return to rule her own people. How Solomon finally wins her, and how this beautiful queen resolves the conflicts among herself, her old religion, and the intrigues of her kinsmen, make The Queen of Sheba an exciting, bold novel of love and faith.

What do you think? Would you continue reading?

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