Marie, Mistress Of The Islands — Robert Gaillard

The Caribbean island in the eighteenth century. A frontier world of duels, wars and slave rebellions - as savage and unpredictable as the rumbling volcanoes that loomed over the jungle. To this outpost of the Sun King's Empire came the fortune hunters and the adventurers, the outlaws and the pirates. Men who staked life and fortune on the thrust of a sword or the fall of the dice.

It was a world of men. But Marie du Parquet knew how to use men. She married an impotent, elderly nobleman for his title, secured his appointment to Martinique, then cast him off in favour of her lover, Jacques du Parquet.

Passionate, ambitious and clever, she used her talents to make her the undisputed mistress of the islands.