About this item
Tahiti 1769. English sailors arrive on the shores of the Polynesian paradise - a place of staggering beauty where magic and ancient myths still hold sway. But they soon devastate the island with disease, war, and death, planting deadly seeds that will be carried back to England forty years later. London 1812. On a gray June morning, the Solander docks, her hold containing hundreds of exotic plants from Tahiti for the King's Gardens at Kew. The apparently successful expedition soon takes a horrifying - and inexplicable - turn: The crew of the Solander starts dying one by one. Thames River Police Chief Charles Horton can find no signs of murder or suicide to explain the deaths, and the ship's surviving crew seems intent on hampering his investigation.
About the Author
Given Amazon is a bookstore (among a great many other things), it seems a bit weird to be introducing myself on here. I mean, if you wandered into a real-world bookstore and there was an author standing there offering to fire random facts about himself at you, it'd be a bit off-putting. Wouldn't it? Or perhaps it'd be nice to bump into David Mitchell or Stephen King as you're browsing the racks.So I'll keep this short, and do tell me to go away if it's getting a bit weird.My name's Lloyd. I live in South London. I've got two children and a lovely wife (she's a headteacher). My first book, The English Monster, came out in 2012. My second, The Poisoned Island, followed in 2013. They're both set in London in the early 19th century, they both feature a proto-detective named Charles Horton and his magistrate John Harriott, and they both combine historical fiction with murder-mystery and a good healthy dash of the supernatural. They've been called 'Regency X-Files' and I rather like that.If you're interested, I enjoy reading literary fiction, horror and some science fiction. My favourite book is The Portrait of a Lady. My favourite author - possibly by virtue of how many of his books I've read - is Stephen King. The best novels I've read recently were The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell and The Sisters Brothers by Patrick Dewitt.I blog at www.lloydshepherd.com, I've got a Facebook page (Lloyd Shepherd: Author) and a pretty active Twitter account (@lloydshep). Do come and say hello. We can talk, then, without me feeling that I'm intruding.Happy shopping!
