An epic novel of an incendiary love that threatened to set the desert alight as war raged between the British and Ottoman Empires. Mesopotamia, 1914: in the Middle East tension is escalating between the British and the Arabs. Misfit Lieutenant Harry Downe is sent to negotiate a treaty with a renegade Bedouin Sheikh, Ibn Shalan, whose tribe is attacking enemy patrols in Iraq and cutting their oil pipelines. Greedy for arms, Shalan accepts British weapons but, in return, Harry must take his daughter Furja to be his bride. The secret marriage leads to a deep love, to the anger of Shalan and the disgust of Harry's fellow officers. But war is looming, and the horrors of the battlefield threaten to destroy Harry's newfound happiness, and change his life and that of his closest friends for ever. Long Road to Baghdad is a vivid, moving, historically accurate account of a conflict between East and Western Empires, based on the wartime exploits of war hero Lieutenant Colonel Gerard Leachman.

Author Biography

Catrin Collier is Wales' most prolific and well-known authors of historical, romantic fictions. The daughter of a Prussian refugee and Welsh father, she grew up in Pontypridd. She has written 19 novels for Orion. Her first historical novel Hearts of Gold, was filmed as a mini-series by the BBC in 2003. She lives with her family on the Gower Peninsula, near Swansea. She also writes crime fiction under the pen name Katherine John.