Ill Wind and Dead Reckoning

Ill Wind:Gabriella Berryngton is an unhappy and oppressed fourteen-year-old girl living in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1683. She dreams of escaping her bitter, ambitious stepfather and sailing off into the unknown. Her dreams come true when her stepfather sells her into marriage. Aboard the Freyja, she is hopeful that her new life in the Dutch West Indies will be an improvement – a hope that dies when she is given a slave, Klara, and a whip. She discovers that her soon-to-be father-in-law is a ruthless slave trader in league with pirates, and her fiancé is cold, unfriendly and disinterested in Gabriella. She is little more than a vessel to provide the next generation of van Eckens. Largely ignored and desperately unhappy, she and Klara develop a friendship which makes life bearable – at first. Once married, Gabriella’s life takes a turn for the worse and she descends into a world of horror and abuse until tensions finally explode. Life will never be the same and she has no choice but to take fate into her own hands. Dead Reckoning:Leo is born in Spanish Panama in 1659. When he is twelve years old he witnesses the violent rape and murder of his mother by three of the Caribbean’s most feared pirates: Tarr, Blake and Hornigold, and swears revenge at all costs. Gabriella is trapped in an abusive marriage to a ruthless Dutch slave trader, who is in business with the same English cut-throats. She risks all to escape with her life. Leo and Gabriella meet aboard one of the most horrific ships in the Caribbean – a slaver – and join forces against their common enemy. They face a number of challenges as they battle not only the dangers of a life at sea, including storm, drowning, and being cast adrift in a crippled ship, but also repeated attacks by Blake and Hornigold. But their biggest threat proves to be each other. Can they reconcile their hearts in time for the fiercest battle in their quest of revenge, and survive the gallows? Dead Reckoning was long-listed in the 2011 Mslexia Novel Competition.