Description
Book SynopsisThe North Atlantic, 14 April 1912. Amid the chaos of the sinking Titanic, a young Eleanor Annenberg meets the eyes of a stranger and is immediately captivated. As the ship buckles around them, she follows him down into the hold and finds him leaning over an open sarcophagus, surrounded by mutilated bodies. She catches but a glimpse of what lies within before she's sucked into a maelstrom of freezing brine and half-devoured corpses.
Elle is pulled out of the water, but the stranger - and the secrets she stumbled upon - are lost. Unintentionally, however, he leaves her a gift; one so compelling that Elle embarks on a journey that pulls her into a world of ancient evils, vicious hunters and human prey to find the man who saved her that fateful night.
From trench warfare at Cape Helles in 1915 to a shipwreck in the tropical shallows off the Honduran coast, from a lost mine beneath the towering Externsteine in a Germany on the verge of war to the gothic crypts of Highgate Cemetery in London, Elle gets closer to a truth she has sought for most of her life. But at what cost? Gifts, after all, are seldom free.
Trade Review‘Soaked in ambience, paced like a wildfire, THE GIFT will have reader clamouring for the next in the trilogy. A rip-roaring old-fashioned-in-the-best way adventure, RA Williams has a knack for period dialogue and eye for the eerie supernatural.’ – GREGG HURWITZ, New York Times bestselling author of the ‘Orphan X’ series; ‘To conceive of a story almost deserving the term ‘epic’ is one thing… to artfully weave its multifarious strands together and do so with scintillating aplomb is another. Where innumerable contemporary authors have drowned in the tumultuous waters of Historical Fantasy, Williams not only remains gloriously buoyant, he seems to thrive amongst its literary eddies, swimming elegantly through his novel’s myriad complexities and myth-soaked depths. He has written an absolute cracker and dextrously laid the foundation for what I am sure will be a hugely popular trilogy.’ – PAUL SPALDING MULCOCK, Yorkshire Times; ‘A gripping and multilayered tale of blood-chilling horror and epic adventure across time and continents, of a woman’s bravery, determination and, above all, love.’ – LIZ FRASER, broadcaster and Amazon bestselling author of Coming Clean
