The Tenth Gift: A Novel (Paperback)

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In 2005 she was in Morocco researching the story of a distant family member who was abducted from a Cornish church in 1625 by Barbary pirates and sold into slavery in North Africa (which formed the basis for THE TENTH GIFT), when a near-fatal climbing incident (which makes an appearance in THE SALT ROAD) caused her to rethink her future.
She returned home, gave up her office job in London, sold her flat and shipped the contents to Morocco. In October she married her own 'Berber pirate' and now they split their time between Cornwall and a village in the Anti-Atlas Mountains.
The next novel, THE SULTAN'S WIFE, which she is currently working on, is set in Morocco in the 17th century and is the story of a eunuch at the court of Sultan Moulay Ismail.
She worked on Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, spending many months in New Zealand with cast and crew. Under the pseudonym of Jude Fisher she wrote three bestselling Visual Companions to the films. She has also written several books for children, the latest being GOLDSEEKERS.
'"My name is Jude Lanyon and I was born in Cornwall in the year in which they cut the head off a king and turned the natural order of the world upside down."
So begins Jane Johnson's GOLDSEEKERS, and by the end of the first page we know that our hero is "destined to be a finder, and a rich man"; that his mother is a witch or a wise woman, and that this is going to be the kind of magical adventure a child of 8 will find impossible to put down...
...To say more would be to spoil a story that unfolds confidently in clear, captivating language and which involves some unexpected magical people. This is Johnson's fifth book for children and her best yet, with a kitten so brave and imperious as to be irresistible. It's stuffed with great scenes and well-drawn characters.