Historical Romance Saturday: Debbie Taylor

This is a new feature @ rather bare foot than bookless

In this feature we will highlight an Author and a book in the historical romance genre that we or one of us really like. But it is mostly about the book. It sort of like a recommendation of a really great read.
This feature is a weekly feature and will be posted every Saturday. If you want to join you are more than welcome to either you just leave a comment with a book you highly recommend or if you want to join with your own post. But if you do don´t forget to leave a comment with your url and to link back to us in your post so others can join in on the fun. You are welcome to use our button or use your own.  

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This week I am featuring an author who I encountered a long time ago. I was just walking by my book case when her book catches my eye and I thought to my self. Well why not, I really enjoyed this book so it will be perfect for this feature. I was however filled with both horror and enjoyment when I read this one. You will know why when you read it. But that is sort of why I like this author, they way you just cat decide if you want to throw away the book or keep on reading. One minute you feel sorry for the heroine and in the next you hate her or at least the way she acts

The Fourth Queen is the story of one woman’s struggle for power and love in the court of the eighteenth-century Emperor of Morocco. Poetically intense and sensual, it marks the debut of a gifted new author.

Beautiful Helen Gloag is determined to escape the cycle of poverty and early death that has destroyed so many women in her native Scotland. Barely out of her teens, she flees her hometown and sets sail for the Colonies on a ship bound for Boston. But the ship falls prey to a band of corsairs—pirates from the Barbary coast of Africa. Helen is taken captive and sent to a procuress in Morocco, where women are sold into the slave markets of the nobility. In the procuress’s house, she is discovered by the witty, soft-hearted dwarf Microphilus, who oversees the Harem of the Emperor himself. Knowing her red hair and milky skin will enthrall his master, he takes her to Marrakech, and the imperial palace.

The Harem of the Emperor is a mysterious, voluptuous, and forbidding place, a hive of dangerous political tensions and unlikely friendships. Microphilus, himself a Scot captured by pirates as a young man, has found his fortune in the Emperor’s Harem, where he serves the Queens, including the charismatic, amazonian African empress Batoom, who is his lover. With Microphilus’s help, Helen learns to negotiate the politics of the Harem and compete for the Emperor’s favor.