Transportation, or sentencing to years in a prison colony
overseas, was a common penalty for the poor or debt-ridden
middle-classes during the 1800s. William Everard, once a
sailor, sentenced to seven years for stealing a pair of
boots, rues the day he took them as he sits in the hold of
a convict ship bound for New South Wales. These are rough
men, and in his late thirties, William just tries to stay
alive. He's had a vision of a strange woman, his destiny.
THE ISIS KNOT swiftly draws the reader into the atmosphere
of the tale, framing the developing city of Sydney through
a porthole. The language is occasionally as boisterous as
the men and deadly snakes and spiders abound. Kindness is
scarce, to be treasured. Sera awakens in this world,
unsure
of who she is or how she arrived here, and an elderly
sheep-
farmer who made good after completing his sentence takes
her in. He believes that she is a fugitive from the
prison.
After all, where else would she have come from?
Elizabeth is a convict woman, abandoned by her lover, who
suffers the indignity of being auctioned off in a crowd of
men starved of women. Barely an hour on land, Elizabeth is
forced through a hasty marriage and dragged off to a shack
in the bush. Sera meanwhile has started to remember her
origins in twentieth-century America, where she was no
saint. What has happened to her? When Sera and William
meet
during a lightning storm in Parramatta, a small bush town,
they know they were predestined to meet. A gold armlet
found by William in an Egyptian grave seems to have
reached
through the centuries and drawn them together... somehow.
And Elizabeth is drawn to the armlet too, but to no good
effect.
This intriguing story is part romance, part historical,
part fantasy and all adult in portraying life at the time.
THE ISIS KNOT winds and binds amidst strange birds, smells
and sounds as the new arrivals try to adapt and the rum-
sodden settlers treat them like property. Bolters, or
runaways, don't last long. Those who enjoy dark paranormal
romance will find one here, and Hanna Martine invokes
Egyptian gods to set the story apart from the norm. Try
the
mix for yourself and when you've read THE ISIS KNOT, there
are other paranormal romances by this author to discover.
Two lives crossed… William Everard was once a man of the sea, until a terrifying incident in Egypt at the turn of the nineteenth century cast him out of the British Royal Navy, forcing him to live in disgrace and to question his sanity. For eighteen years, visions have driven his actions and directed his life. When they compel him to commit theft, he is sentenced to the New South Wales prison colony, half a world away. Death would have been more kind. Sera Oliver awakes in a desolate, sun-baked land with no memory but her name. She senses, however, that the gold band with the curious symbols clamped around her arm does not belong to her, and that she does not belong to this place…or this time. Their souls knotted together… During a hellish five-month sea voyage, William is haunted by the face of a beautiful, troubled woman. He knows what he must do when he reaches Australia: Find the woman. End the visions. Regain control over his mind. For Sera, William’s presence begins to unlock the keys to her past—or is it her future? She doesn’t know which frightens her more: the sudden knowledge of her modern-day birth, the terrifying story behind her time travel, or the dangerous magic that now runs through her body. Fear of this cruel, unfamiliar world makes Sera reluctant to trust William, until an ancient enemy crosses continents and centuries to hunt her, and she must turn to William for answers, for life, and for love. But will their connection bind the fraying strands of time…or unravel the world?