Isobelle — Mary Lide

Across the shimmering desert sands comes a story of love and adventure, a story as passionate as a woman's hidden fantasies and as mysterious as the secrets of the harem. By award-winning author Mary Lide, Isobelle is a rich, romantic tale woven to capture both the imagination and the heart....

It is the story of a young Victorian girl, Isobelle, the sole survivor of a terrible ship-wreck, whom fate deposits like a lovely bit of flotsam on the wild Barbary Coast of North Africa. Here, she will find herself swept up by a caravan of desert raiders and taken into a world closed to Western eyes. Far from the land and the people she knows, she will need all the courage and ingenuity at her command. For more than her life is in danger....

Enslaved, traded for gold, and carried to the mysterious Castle of the Lord of the High Tigran - a clan of fierce Berber fighters - Isobelle would be wrapped in silks, perfumed by sandalwood, and rouged with henna. But she vowed to die rather than submit to the chieftain she had heard called only "The Master.". Arrogant, robed in black and astride a black horse, he had saved her from the slavemaster's sword and now was coming to claim his bounty. But then - his laughing green eyes revealing a heritage European as well as Eastern - he reached out to her with gentleness, not force. And he promised to teach her all the delights of love, to show her the four doors to passion - and answer her newfound desire with all the heat of the Sahara sun.

In a violent land of blood feuds and conquering tribes, he was a leader determined to bring his people out of primeval darkness and preserve their freedom in a changing world. Then, when he saw the spirited, long-haired Isobelle, kismet touched his very soul. She was a woman who knew nothing of flashing scimitars and vengeance, a woman who could share his dreams and his future.

But within the castle walls was waiting a rival whose cruel conspiracy was plotting Isobelle death. And even as she felt the first stirrings of desire, the chill of danger told her it was madness to love this Berber king...yet impossible to ignore the call of destiny and the wild promise of this primitive land.