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.
beloved 1989 Barbary Wars romance, now fully revised with new original
content.
About the Author
limitless as the tales told by its many colorful residents, dreamers and
entrepreneurs all, with some scoundrels sprinkled in. Colleen grew up reading
and writing stories of every kind. She wrote her first short story at eight,
began a novel at 14 and read authors like Ayn Rand and Clive Cussler at 13.
After college when she married and expected her first child, she used a scrap
computer assembled by her engineer husband, to write her first novel, Wild
Heart Tamed (not posted digitally because she considers it a learning
experience).
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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