Jewell in the Dark

What if...for the first time in the history of the United States we took a social and economic nose dive into oblivion? The Between Times is just such a scenario. A story that reads like a folk tale from the past, but in reality is a fantastic possibility based on the choices available to us today.

"Marta Moran Bishop’s Darkness Descends is powerful, gripping work! It’s a compelling, sometimes scathing prequel to her first series title, The Between Times. Set in a dystopian city-state, Bishop indicts a patriarchal oligarchy that feeds a rape culture at the same time as it plots the overthrow of the rule of law with the anarchic rule of a well-managed mob psyche. The Roman people were given bread and circuses." (Robert Blake Whitehill, author/screenwriter, the Ben Blackshaw series)

In the days when the corporations rule the world, the middle class is gone and the cities are divided into upper and lower towns. The upper towns are domed to protect the rich from the foul air that permeates the world, from the waste that fills the air, and fumes that blacken the sky from the smoke stacks of the factories. The water is heavily rationed in the lower towns and barely drinkable, so fouled by the chemicals that fill the rivers and springs.

"Marta Moran Bishop’s The Between Times is a terrific allegory, until the sucker punch. You think you’re reading a dystopian story set in some future time. Then you suddenly realize Bishop is writing about right now. The Between Times is a period in which we still have a chance save all we hold dear. Fail to marshal our collective powers, and we fail as a society, a culture, as a nation state, and the beacon to the world that America has always been is snuffed, never to be reignited." (Robert Blake Whitehill)

Dawn Rises, the sequel to The Divide Series, brings us hope after 15 years of despair. When all rights were taken away from women, children, and anyone who was not rich and white.