Book Details - Mistress of the Sea

Plymouth 1570; Ellyn Cooksley fears for her elderly father’s health when he declares his intention to sail with Drake on an expedition he has been backing. Already yearning for escape from the loveless marriage planned for her, Ellyn boards the expedition ship as a stowaway.

Also aboard the Swan is Will Doonan, Ellyn’s charming but socially inferior neighbour. Will has courted Ellyn playfully without any real hope of winning her, but when she is discovered aboard ship, dressed in the garb of a cabin boy, he is furious.

To Will’s mind, Drake’s secret plot to attack the Spanish bullion supply in the New World is a means to the kind of wealth with which he might win a girl like Ellyn, but first and foremost it is an opportunity to avenge his brother Kit, taken hostage and likely tortured to death by the Spanish. For the sake of the mission he supports Drake’s plan to abandon Ellyn and her father on an island in the Caribbean until their mission is completed. But will love prove more important than revenge or gold?…

Buy

“Sizzling... fun, fascinating and vividly drawn... real history and thrilling romance”

Lancashire Evening Post

More reviews of Mistress of the Sea

The Journey Behind Mistress of the Sea

I am passionate about ‘being there’ – engaging with the location of my stories as much as possible – tasting and smelling them, enjoying and enduring them

El Camino Real

The Royal Road was the route by which the treasure from South America was carried from the Pacific to the Caribbean. I was fortunate to be able to experience a little of what it must have been like to journey along this road over steep hills covered in dense forest, fording torrents, passing hidden drops, at times precipitous, often dangerous, to fight off the insects and feel the enervation of coping with almost a hundred per cent humidity.

In places along the well-preserved Las Cruces Trail, an extension of the Camino Real, it is possible to see deep pits worn in the stones by the passage of countless mule-trains over the centuries. This is tangible history, and I love it.

‘Nombre De Dios’

The site of old Nombre De Dios was largely buried under earth and vegetation when I saw it, and the geology of the bay has changed dramatically since Drake’s attack on the city in 1572. But you can still see a place like this and imagine how it might have been, then think back to events over four hundred years before, on a night when the moon was up and storm clouds were rising…

This is the real joy of breathing life into a story – overlaying the first-hand accounts with the experience of place. When the magic takes hold the characters begin to talk, move, act – and suddenly the story is telling itself.

The Lost Duchess

Emme Fifield has fallen about as far as a gentlewoman can.

Once a lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth, her only hope of surviving the scandal that threatens to engulf her is to escape England for a fresh start in the New World, where nobody has ever heard of the Duchess of Somerset.

‘Barden expertly weaves intricate historical detail around her love story’ lovereading.co.uk.

Book Details

Buy