In an entertaining if uneven debut novel from a U.K. publishing executive, dual story lines feature spirited English heroines--a 17th-century country girl and a modern-day craft shop owner--both with a gift for embroidery. As a farewell gift from her married lover, Julia Lovat receives a book published in 1625 and filled with a variety of sewing patterns. Inside the manual, Julia discovers the words, scribbled in pencil over the pages, of Cat Ann Tregenna, a 19-year-old British servant kidnapped by Muslim raiders and taken to Morocco to be sold into slavery. En route, the pirate leader, Al-Andalusi, is wounded in a battle, and Cat and her needlepoint skills are called on to stitch up the man's wounds, an encounter that leads to a tangled interfaith rivalry.

Julia Lovat -walks away from her seven-year affair with Michael with a broken heart and a book of secrets. Her book tells the true story of Cat Tregenna, kidnapped by Barbary pirates off the Cornish coast and sold into slavery in Morocco four hundred years ago.

When Julia travels to Morocco to discover Cat's fate she is quickly lost in an exotic and vibrant land. Yet her guide is Idriss, a man so charismatic and beguiling that their meeting feels like destiny. And so, in the heat and dust, two love stories, separated by four centuries, entwine and blossom...

The Tenth Gift is an enthralling story of secrets and discovering love where you least expect it.