A LOVE STORY FORGED IN TRAGEDY.
A PAST SHE CANNOT REMEMBER.
A FUTURE SHE CANNOT ESCAPE.
Magda Asparov
At twenty years old, Magda Asparov knows exactly what she wants from life: wealth, status and independence.
Born into a struggling Ukrainian family, she has no intention of remaining a peasant farmer's daughter. Beautiful, intelligent and fiercely ambitious, Magda is travelling aboard Titanic to America, where she is expected to marry the wealthy Matthew G. Turner III, a man twice her age whom she has never met. For Magda, it is not a love match. It is her opportunity to take control of her own destiny.
But when Titanic strikes the iceberg, Magda is hit by falling ice and disappears into the freezing Atlantic. Against impossible odds, she survives, rescued days later by Captain Richard Blackmore and the crew of The Lady Jane.
When she finally wakes, she remembers nothing. Not Ukraine. Not Turner. Not even her own name.
The crew give the mysterious young survivor a name.
Maggie.
Captain Richard Blackmore
Captain Richard Blackmore is a sailor first and foremost. Dependable, experienced and fiercely protective of the men under his command.
Blackmore commands The Lady Jane with the quiet authority of a man who believes a captain's first responsibility is to his crew. He has little patience for incompetence, even less for interference from the ship's wealthy owners, and expects the same professionalism from others that he demands of himself.
When news of Titanic's sinking reaches him, Blackmore immediately turns The Lady Jane towards the disaster.
The Lady Jane is the last ship on the scene, yet among the wreckage and dead bodies, his crew discovers something nobody expects to find. A survivor.
The beautiful young woman remembers nothing of her past, but from the moment she opens her eyes, Richard Blackmore realises his carefully ordered life is in trouble. What begins as compassion soon becomes something far more personal, leaving the normally assured captain awkward, tongue-tied and hopelessly captivated.
Matthew G. Turner III
Matthew G. Turner III was born into wealth, power and one of America's great family dynasties. Unfortunately, he inherited the name but not the talent.
His grandfather and father built an empire. Matthew has spent much of his life quietly dismantling it. Behind the expensive clothes, easy charm and air of Southern respectability lies a failing businessman kept afloat by debt, intimidation and the ruthless acquisition of other people's property.
Marriage offers Turner another opportunity. In Ukraine he finds Magda Asparov, a beautiful young woman half his age whose impoverished family owns something potentially far more valuable than their daughter: land in Alaska. Turner intends to acquire both.
Then Titanic sinks.
Magda is declared missing, presumed dead, but Turner refuses to accept it. Not through grief or love, but because nobody takes something belonging to Matthew G. Turner III. His determination to find her soon becomes an obsession, and he has exactly the man required to do the searching.
William Harker.
Turner considers Magda a possession, another asset in an empire he is desperate to preserve.
His problem is that somewhere in New York, Magda Asparov has ceased to exist.
And Maggie has no idea Matthew Turner is looking for her.
The Brittle Sea
Magda Asparov travels from Ukraine, oblivious to the danger she is sailing into when she boards the Titanic to sail to a new and rich life. With an arranged marriage to Matthew Turner, a corrupt wealthy American businessman, waiting for her in America, and a manipulative independent spirit, Magda knew what her destiny would be.
But when the Titanic goes down, Magda survives and awakens with no memory of who she is, where she's from, or where she was going.
Rescued by Captain Richard Blackmore of The Lady Jane, the ship's steward names her Maggie. Maggie learns to navigate the unfamiliar waters of her new life, but must confront the secrets of her past while falling in love with Richard Blackmore.
Believing Magda survived the Titanic sinking, Turner has set his vengeful henchman, William Harker, the task of finding Magda. Harker relentlessly pursues Magda and, as the search intensifies, Blackmore finds himself in the crosshairs of danger.
The Brittle Sea is book one in The Brittle Saga, an exciting historical drama trilogy, packed with suspense and psychological thrills.
William Harker
William Harker wasn't always a monster. Matthew Turner simply discovered how useful a bitter man could become.
Born and raised in New York's Hell's Kitchen, Harker once had the makings of a decent young man. But life, resentment and Matthew Turner's influence have transformed him into something altogether darker. By the time Magda Asparov disappears, Harker has become Turner's trusted fixer, investigator and enforcer, a man with a reputation for violence that unsettles even his employer.
Harker is intelligent, patient and dangerously practical. He understands Turner better than Turner understands himself, and beneath the outward loyalty lies contempt for the man who pays him. When Turner wants Magda found, Harker names his price and accepts the job without hesitation.
For Harker, morality has long since become an inconvenience. Threats, deception and violence are simply tools, and he has become exceptionally good at using them.
But The Brittle Sea is also the story of what happens when men believe they can control other people's lives.
Matthew Turner believes he controls William Harker.
William Harker may have other ideas.
Peter Asparov
Peter Asparov is eighteen years old, a Ukrainian farm boy with little money, little experience of the world and an unwavering devotion to his older sister.
Where Magda is ambitious, calculating and determined to escape her humble beginnings, Peter is simpler and more innocent. He adores his sister despite her often cruel treatment of him, following her with the unquestioning loyalty of a younger brother who cannot imagine a world without her.
When news reaches Ukraine that Titanic has sunk and Magda is presumed dead, Peter refuses to abandon hope. While his parents grieve, he becomes convinced that somehow his sister survived.
So Peter makes an extraordinary decision.
With little more than some food, spare clothing and the money he can scrape together, he leaves his family home and sets out for America.
He is going to find Magda.
Peter believes his journey will reunite him with the sister he worships. Instead, it will introduce an innocent Ukrainian farm boy to a world of wealth, corruption, violence and betrayal he could never have imagined.
And Peter Asparov's journey is only just beginning.
First Officer David James
David James is the man Captain Richard Blackmore trusts to keep The Lady Jane running when everyone else seems determined to make his life difficult.
As Blackmore's first officer, James is capable, dependable and unflappable. His calm Scottish manner provides the perfect counterweight to his captain's sometimes explosive temper, and when Blackmore gives an order, David can be relied upon to carry it out, even when that order involves putting the ship's drunken chief engineer in the brig.
But David James is far more than Blackmore's subordinate. He is a trusted friend, a steady presence and a man whose loyalty extends well beyond the deck of The Lady Jane. When trouble follows Blackmore ashore, David and his wife Mary become important allies in trying to discover exactly what is happening around them.
David is not a man who seeks confrontation, wealth or power. He is happier with a ship beneath his feet, a job that needs doing and people he can trust.
Unfortunately, The Brittle Sea is about to make all three increasingly difficult.
Gordon Bellagon
Gordon Bellagon is a man who believes wealth and influence are proof of his own importance. He has both in abundance.
A successful businessman and owner of The Lady Jane, Bellagon has built a position for himself among New York's wealthy elite. Shipping interests, political connections and carefully cultivated friendships have given him influence far beyond the walls of his office. But much of that success rests upon favours, connections and knowing exactly which wheels need greasing.
Gordon also has one considerable complication in his life.
His sister, Alicia.
Alicia's influence extends into Gordon's business affairs, even protecting her drunken son when his incompetence aboard The Lady Jane earns Captain Blackmore's fury. Blackmore knows exactly where the real power lies, and it isn't always with the man who owns the ship.
Pompous, self-important and accustomed to people knowing their place, Gordon Bellagon represents the respectable face of wealth and influence.
But respectability can be a remarkably thin veneer.
And when Richard Blackmore refuses to behave like a man who knows his place, Gordon Bellagon discovers that owning a ship is not quite the same thing as owning its captain.
Alicia Bellagon
Alicia Bellagon is wealthy, formidable and absolutely convinced of her own importance. Should anyone forget that fact, Alicia is more than happy to remind them.
Sister to shipping magnate Gordon Bellagon, Alicia inhabits the upper reaches of New York society and intends to be noticed there. Fashion, appearances and social connections matter enormously. Even a charity event for the survivors of Titanic is, to Alicia, as much an opportunity to be seen as an opportunity to help.
She is demanding, vain and magnificently difficult. Dress fittings become minor military campaigns as seamstresses struggle to reconcile Alicia's measurements with the considerably smaller measurements Alicia believes she possesses. Tea, cake and liberal quantities of flattery usually restore order.
But beneath the extravagance is a woman accustomed to getting exactly what she wants. Even Gordon knows better than to interfere once his older sister has made up her mind.
Then a handsome stranger enters her life.
He calls himself William Harker.
For perhaps the first time in years, Alicia Bellagon discovers something she wants that money and social position cannot provide.
Romance.
Unfortunately for Alicia, someone else has already decided exactly what that romance is going to cost her.
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