<p><br></p><p><strong>A girl fights to contain her inner beast.</strong><br type="_moz"></p><p><br></p><p>"Primal forest, dim light and the muscular grace of a large predator sliding through the undergrowth. Mika twitched, caught up in her dream. Gnats swarmed above the moss coated pools. The crashing of beasts in the distance and the humming of bees. She threaded her way through, blinking in the green light."</p><p><br></p><p>Fifteen year old Mika is to be married to a foreign boy she has only met once, despite her family mourning the recent disappearance of her twin brother, Kaylan. Forced to live in a strange land far from her home in Cassai, she is resigned to her life as a lady until the day she discovers her new family dead around her. Mika escapes and disguises herself as a boy to survive while she attempts to find her brother. Meanwhile, her dreams are filled with a predator stalking the forests of her homeland leaving her trembling with the taste of blood.<br type="_moz"></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Woman, Shapeshifter, Healer</strong><br type="_moz"></p><p><br></p><p>The Lion of Ackbarr is the first book of The Medici Chronicles</p><p><br></p><p>The countries of Cassai and Ackbarr have held an uneasy truce for many years, with Cassai hidden between its ring of mountains and the sea beyond. The Medici Chronicles charts twenty years of Mika's life through her marriage and subsequent escape into the Medici – a caste of healers and doctors. Always the outsider, in her search for the truth about her brother's disappearance Mika uncovers more than she bargains for - she has been lied to - about her past, her people and her country.<br type="_moz"></p><p><br></p>