Books by Kirsten McKenzie

1762. Mary is desperate to escape her embittered mother. So when her marriage to a prosperous sea captain is arranged, she embraces the damp salt air, cramped conditions and bad food. She sets sail on the Isabella, away from the land of her childhood towards unseen places and an unknown future.But being the captain's wife is going to be harder than she thought. Her husband is still grieving for his first wife, and Mary can't ignore her feelings towards another man onboard. Through him, she has a taste of the kind of love she might have known, and even begins to think that escape is possible. With ruthless pirates patrolling British waters and ports full of outcasts with unspoken pasts, Mary learns quickly that loyalties are always shifting and people are rarely as they first seem. The Captain's Wife is a richly realised story of adventure about a strong young woman determined to survive her fate by a wonderful storyteller.

Emilio and Rosa are childhood sweethearts, engaged to be married. But it is 1942 and the war has taken Emilio far from Italy, to a tiny Orkney island where he is a POW. Rosa must wait for him to return and help her mother run the family hotel on the shores of Lake Como, in Italy. Feeling increasingly frustrated with his situation, Emilio is inspired by the idea of building a chapel on the barren island.The prisoners band together to create an extraordinary building out of little more than salvaged odds and ends and homemade paints. Whilst Emilio's chapel will remain long after the POW camp has been left to the sheep, will his love for Rosa survive the hardships of war and separation? For Rosa is no longer the girl that he left behind. She is being drawn further into the Italian resistance movement and closer to danger, as friendships and allegiances are ever complicated by the war. Human perseverance and resilience are at the heart of this strong debut and the small Italian chapel remains, as it does in reality on the island of Lamb's Holm, as a symbol of these qualities.