Escape From the Past: The Duke’s Wrath Blog Tour and Giveaway

Escape from the Past: The Duke’s Wrath
by Annette Oppenlander
Genre: YA Historical Fiction, Time-Travel
Release Date: July 31st 2015

Summary from Goodreads:

When fifteen-year-old nerd and gamer Max Anderson thinks he’s sneaking a preview of an unpublished video game, he doesn’t realize that 1) He’s been chosen as a beta, an experimental test player. 2) He’s playing the ultimate history game, transporting him into the actual past: anywhere and anytime. And 3) Survival is optional: to return home he must decipher the game’s rules and complete its missions—if he lives long enough. To fail means to stay in the past—forever.

Now Max is trapped in medieval Germany, unprepared and clueless. It is 1471 and he quickly learns that being an outcast may cost him his head. Especially after rescuing a beautiful peasant girl from a deadly infection and thus provoking sinister wannabe Duke Ott. Overnight he is dragged into a hornets’ nest of feuding lords who will stop at nothing to bring down the conjuring stranger in their midst.

Excerpt

I leaned forward because all of a sudden my chest was killing me.

I was stuck in a truck-sized vise, my ribs squeezing together,

body compressing. My lungs throbbed and I couldn’t breathe,

not even a little. My arms and legs felt numb. Do something, I

thought. I pushed myself to stand. Something is wrong with the

game, stop the game, my mind urged. But I couldn’t. Lights

exploded behind my eyelids and I had to pay every shred of

attention to the task of breathing.

It occurred to me that I was having a heart attack.

My mother’s face flashed by. I wanted to shout for her, but my

lungs had quit for good, my tongue a rigid piece of meat. She’d

find me in the morning dead on the carpet. My sight turned

foggy then black. I was passing out. I sucked frantically and

drew in a bit of air. Slowly with each breath the crushing

heaviness disappeared.

Blinking away the haze, I wiped my sweaty forehead. I

should make an appointment with the family doctor.

Something moved ahead. There at the edge of a clearing

cowered the man in rags holding his right elbow. He trembled

and now that I was closer, I saw blood dripping from his wrist.

The three riders had surrounded him, their blades pointing

toward the man’s neck. One rider dismounted, his face shadowed

by a half helmet and curled brownish beard, his hands covered

by steel gauntlets like lizard scales. The other two sat motionless,

waiting. I tried to get a better view of what the horsemen were

doing when I looked down.

And froze.

I stood on the root of an oak tree. Surely I imagined things.

But those were definitely my Nikes I’d forgotten to take off when

I returned home. I moved my foot. Leaves crackled. A twig

snapped. Something terrible had happened, something I couldn’t

wrap my mind around. I blinked and looked to my right. Trees

and undergrowth were losing themselves in the gloom. I remembered

the mouse in my right hand, but when I lifted my arm, my

fingers came up empty—except for the smear of something sticky

on my palm. I was bleeding.

Wait.

The bush next to me was covered in blood. Not mine, I

realized with relief. Disgusted I wiped my shaking hands with a

fistful of leaves and turned to look behind me. The woods

stretched into darkness—shadows within shadows nearly black.

My room was gone.

Buy Links:

Amazon│Barnes and Noble│Indiebound

Book Trailer:

About the Author

Annette Oppenlander writes historical fiction for young adults and anyone who loves stories set in the past. When she isn’t in front of her computer, she loves indulging her dog, Mocha, and traveling around the U.S. and Europe to discover amazing histories.

“Nearly every place holds some kind of secret, something that makes history come alive. When we scrutinize people and places closely, history is no longer a number, it turns into a story.”