'The Lost Story of Britain's Convict Disaster in Africa and How It Led to the Settlement of Australia.'
Emma Christopher is one of the most brilliant young historians of her generation.
In A Merciless Place, she has found the 'missing link' between the American Revolution and The Fatal Shore, and tells the extraordinary story - lost for two centuries - of how a failed British attempt to establish a penal colony in West Africa led to their eventual decision to abandon their African plans and establish a new colony in the recently discovered colony known as New South Wales.
Emma Christopher has written a fascinating book with a cast of memorable rogues and villainous characters, as well as unfolding a hitherto little-known remarkable true story that will entrance all readers of narrative non-fiction. Written in a lively, accessible style, A Merciless Place will attract major media and review coverage here, as it tells a chapter of Australian history that few people know and that has not been the subject of a book before.
If a young, unknown British historian Julia Lovell, can sell over 5,000 hardbacks of her book on The Great Wall of China, we should be able to make this amazing and Australia-specific story into a bestseller!