Historical Romance
Date Published: July 4, 2026
Who is he? Why did he desert his country?
His latest capture: a fine yacht. And its owner. . . Lady Victoria Grenville.
Who is she? Can an heiress to a fortune conform to harem life?
Amidst sea battles, kidnappings, and political menace from the Dey of Algiers, Sinan and Tory start as captor and captive. But their fierce battle of wills will transform them both.
Most importantly, if Tory can’t submit to him will he sell her at auction? Or can she escape before he does?
Kismet has other plans.
In 1799, Lady Victoria "Tory" Grenville, a willful English heiress, is captured at sea by Sinan Reis, a blond Barbary pirate captain secretly working for a cause he can't reveal. Aboard his xebec and within the walls of an Algiers harem, captor and captive wage a battle of wills that becomes a battle for the heart, set against real political intrigue between the new United States, the Dey of Algiers, and the warring Federalists and Democratic-Republicans of post-Revolutionary Philadelphia. Sweeping sea battles, kidnappings, and court machinations build to a richly satisfying historical romance grounded in meticulously researched 18th-century detail.
* New, expanded edition with a newly written epilogue extending the story into the events of 1814, bridging to the author's upcoming Regency-era trilogy.
* Bonus material: author's historical notes, a detailed bibliography/source list documenting the book's research, and a preview/teaser of Shannon's forthcoming "Fire, Wind and Earth" trilogy (Ashes, Burning Bright; Whirlwind, Burning Bright; Tiger, Burning Bright).
* Author Colleen Shannon was nominated by Romantic Times as Best New Historical Romance Author and has won/been nominated for multiple industry awards (including a Kiss Award) across an 18-novel career with over a million copies in print.
* Limited deluxe hardback printing released to mark the U.S. 250th anniversary with patriotic design features available on Colleen Shannon's author website.
About the Author
She sold it herself to Berkley in less than a year, and at the age of 26 began a new career and never looked back. The strength of her first book led to her nomination by Romantic Times as Best New Historical Author. She went on to win and/or be nominated for many other awards, including a Kiss Award for all three heroes of her Fairy Tale trilogy written for Dorchester Books. One of her six completed scripts is a modern, very different version to her Georgian England set beauty and the beast novel The Gentle Beast. It has not been shown as it needs heavy revisions but she moves easily between scripts and novels, including original screenplays like Full Circle, currently revised after two Blacklist evaluations. In the last two years, she has become one of Film Freeways’ top winning screenwriters internationally, per Film Freeway management.
Her 18 single title releases have appeared on many bestseller lists; she has well over a million books in print. Colleen’s recent works include thrillers and screenplays that combine her favorite novel story elements: romance, suspense, history and action. Most recently, she published three Kensington Lyrical Press romantic suspense. The first in the series, Foster Justice, was released in December 2014 and ranked #1 on Amazon’s Western Romance list. Colleen converted the story to a novel from the original script version she wrote at UCLA’s Advanced Professional Screenwriting program.
Colleen Shannon graduated cum laude from the University of Texas at Austin with a B.A. in Archaeology and more recently earned her Master’s in Real Estate Development from the University of Southern California. She currently lives in Austin, Texas.
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