About the Book
Book: Secrets of the Desert Rose
Author: Marilyn Turk
Genre: Dual Timeline
Release Date: February 24, 2026
Three Women. Two generations. Their friendship survived the war. Their secret survived even longer.
Monique and Audrey, one French and one British, grow up in French Algiers on the coast of the sparkling Mediterranean Sea. Best friends, they keep each other’s secrets into adulthood when World War II changes their world and Algiers sides with the Hitler-based Vichy government. Audrey joins Charles DeGaulle’s resistance army, the French Foreign Legion, while Monique stays to work in the underground resistance aiding the Allied invasion of North Africa.
In present day, American born great-granddaughter Nicole, a graduate student in archaeology, goes to North Africa for an internship. The now centenarian Monique (Mimi), debilitated by a stroke, urges her to find the Desert Rose. Nicole finds different types of desert roses, but none are the right one until she stumbles onto information that hints the desert rose might not be a flower after all. While Sami, her instructor in Algiers, helps her find the desert rose, he also has to protect her from people who want the heirloom ring Nicole wears which has its own secret.
Will Nicole find the secret before it’s too late?
Excerpt from the Book:
Prologue
North Africa, 1942
Was this the day she would die?
Audrey covered her helmet with her hands and burrowed facedown into the sand as another shell landed nearby, shaking the ground and showering her with one more layer of dust in her desert dugout. She spit out sand and turned her head to suck in a breath. The relentless ear-splitting booming and shelling from German Panzer tanks continued as if their supply of ammunition was infinite. Would any of her fellow soldiers survive this time? Concern for their safety, those who had become more like family were more important to her now than her own life. Maybe this would be her last moments on earth, a fitting end to the life she had chosen. What else did she have to lose?
Her mind flashed back to her best friend Monique and how they first met. Where was she now? No doubt someplace safe living out her protected life, enjoying the comforts of modern conveniences—something Audrey hadn’t experienced for quite some time. Not that she envied her friend. Monique’s life had always been more genteel than her own, and Audrey had long accepted their differences and the choices they’d made.
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About the Author
Award-winning author Marilyn Turk has written over twenty historical and contemporary novels and novellas laced with suspense and romance. She especially likes writing World War II era books, and loves to discover information not widely known for her stories. In addition to fiction, Marilyn is also an annual contributor to Guideposts’ Walking in Grace and other Guideposts anthologies.
Marilyn enjoys helping other writers and founded the Blue Lake Christian Writers Conference. She is a member of American Christian Fiction Writers, Faith, Hope and Love Christian Writers, AWSA, Word Weavers International and the United States Lighthouse Society.
Marilyn’s most recent books have been Secrets of the Desert Rose, The Escape Game set in World War II, and a novella, The Gilding of Minnie Tucker, set in The Gilded Age..
She and her husband Chuck have a blended family of four sons, one daughter and four grandsons whom they enjoy spending time with. Marilyn and Chuck are lighthouse enthusiasts and have visited over 100 lighthouses in the United States and other countries. They also served as volunteer lighthouse caretakers at Little River Light off the coast of Maine. As a result of her interest in lighthouses, Marilyn wrote Lighthouse Devotions, 52 Inspiring Lighthouse Stories.