Irene, an unscrupulous treasure hunter teams up with Simone, a drug addict with an abusive husband at the request of Mr Simms to plunder Cambodia’s lost scrolls. From Shanghai, they take a boat immediately after the murder of Simone’s husband, but by the time they reach Saigon and Irene has revealed all the information about the scrolls’ location, she discovers Simone is teaming up with Louis and has her own plans once she gets her hands of the copper scrolls.
Jo’s editor approves a series of articles that Jo intends to research and write for Women in Action. One is about hypnosis and regression that she is sure she’ll disprove. Jo interviews Dr Bennet, a well-known hypnotist and agrees to be hypnotised. Instead of believing she can’t go under, Jo finds herself as Matilda, a woman who lived in Wales 800 year ago. She becomes obsessed with Matilda’s life and finds these regressions begin to take over her life.
What is it that connects her so deeply to Matilda’s life and her association with King John? And how are some of the men she knows in the present bound to this long-ago era?
In a London prison, Sarah, committed to hang for the murder of a man, must escape her sentence and board the Rajah headed to Van Diemen’s Land. In the 1840s, 200 women guilty of petty crimes are to board the ship and start life afresh on the far away island. Sarah is determined to be one of them. The night before the prisoners in her cell are to board the ship, she drugs another inmate, ties her up, takes her name tag, and hides her under a blanket.
In Canton, a child’s family dies around him and Professor Lovell barges in and places a silver bar on the boy to revive him. Once the Chinese boy recovers, he travels by ship to the professor’s English estate where he is tutored for years in Greek and Latin. He substitutes his Chinese name for Robin and enters Oxford where he takes lectures in the Translation Department. There he meets three members of his cohort—Ramy (from Bengal), Victoria (originally from Haiti but brought up in France) and their only English student, Letty. They form a tight group in their first year, but changes occur when first Robin meets his half-brother in hiding, Griffin whose totally different perspective on the Translation Department’s objectives begin to set Robin on a different course.
This is a tale that on the surface appears to be part fantasy, but the underlying themes of racial prejudice, sexism, and British colonial greed ring true and lead these students on a dangerous journey.
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