Dreams of the Alhambra
by Karen Barrow

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A missing friend. A fractured memory. A past that refuses to let go. Mackenzie Douglas wakes in a hospital in Istanbul with no memory of the night her friend Copper disappeared. Months later, unable to shake the trauma of Copper’s disappearance, she flees to southern Spain to lose herself in the Alhambra, the focus of her master’s thesis. But the Alhambra’s legendary palaces hold secrets of their own. A seemingly harmless tisane, meant to quiet the nightmares that plague her sleep, instead draws Mackenzie into vivid dreams of a spirited Moorish princess navigating forbidden love, betrayal, and political upheaval in fifteenth-century Spain—a story that begins to intertwine with her own in ways she cannot explain. As danger and intrigue close in around the princess, fragments of Mackenzie’s lost night in Istanbul resurface, revealing that the threat she escaped has followed her to Spain. Caught between two timelines, two destinies, and lives that may span centuries, Mackenzie realizes that to survive, she must face the darkest truth of all: Some histories return not to haunt us—but to claim us.

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Karen Barrow is a Trinidad-born Canadian author. Her first novel, Palmyra (2024), won the Whistler Independent Book Award, and it was also shortlisted for the Guernica Prize, the Eric Hoffman Award, and the Page Turner Awards. Karen’s second novel, Dreams of the Alhambra, continues to combine a love of travel and writing historical suspense. She lives in the Okanagan Valley, British Columbia, where she practices yoga, enjoys hiking, paddleboarding, biking, and is a keen kitesurfing groupie. You can follow her at https://www.kamabarrow.org/ Instagram kamamacd Facebook Karen Barrow-MacDougall

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