Gothic for women, by a man

NEW RELEASES

Penguin Books India has reissued the nine historical adventure-romance classics written by Madeleine Brent in the 1970s and 1980s.

The author description supplied the information that Brent had worked for a magazine publishing company and then went into the forces where she trained as a cipher clerk.

As it turned out, this was really one of the best-kept secrets in the publishing world, for "Madeleine Brent" was really a pseudonym for Peter O'Donnell, the creator of Modesty Blaise. O'Donnell described these as "Gothic novels", a genre of books written by women writers for an audience of women, and he initially took on the challenge for fun.

As the following summaries will make clear, the stories told in these books follow a comfortable pattern.

Stormswift
Rs 295
315 pages

Deep in the mountain wilderness of the Hindu Kush, a 17-year-old English girl endures an ordeal as a slave in the tribal kingdom of Shul before, at last, there comes a chance of escape.

On a hazardous journey across Afghanistan with a man who hates her, she hears for the first time a name that will later echo menacingly in her life...the name Stormswift. Once home, she faces the shock of being compelled to doubt her own identity. Is she truly Jemimah Lawley, or is she suffering from delusions caused by her degrading ordeal as Lalla of Shul?

Soon Jemimah is plunged into a new world where mystery after mystery unfolds, but she is eventually compelled to return to the barbaric land of her captivity to encounter the dark shadows of death and disaster.

Golden Urchin
Rs 295
375 pages

In the scorching Australian desert, a beautiful woman rescues a man from death...and soon discovers a stunning new life. He is a handsome English aristocrat, sprawled in the dunes, dying of thirst. She is a white-skinned savage, fleeing the aboriginal tribe that found her and raised her.

Meg is able to escape her primitive life as Luke introduces her to the strange ways of Victorian England. In a search filled with adventure and excitement that spans three continents, she uncovers the clues to her true identity "" and realises that someone is trying to kill her.

But the mysteries and secrets of the aborigines still pulse through the newly Victorian lady, enabling Meg to triumph in a final desperate battle for survival - and triumph in love as well.