It is May 1977, a quiet house in the English Cotswolds. Emily,an emotionally fragile,gentle, nature-loving girl, is approaching her eighteenth birthday. Her father, Martin, has become worried about her since the death of her mother, as she has begun to walk in her sleep and says she sees her mother’s ghost. When Martin gets the chance to join his friend Barnaby on an archaeological dig on Crete, he welcomes Emily’s suggestion that she and her older brother David join him out there. Staying with their father’s Greek friends, Emily and David are introduced to the thoughtful young son of the family, Petros, who is prepared to go along with David’s constant quest for fun and girls but who falls in love with the shy, distant Emily. When the siblings notice a mysterious island in the bay, now deserted and a source of superstitious fear among the local villagers, David is eager to explore it, despite Petros’ warnings, but Emily feels afraid and troubled. Eventually the island draws them in, and soon Manolis, a local fisherman who is obsessed with the island for his own reasons, leads them all into a terrifying adventure. The story winds its way through Cretan labyrinths to a strange and surprising conclusion. 
Suitable for age 16+ Some mild sexual scenes and one violent scene

The Glass Madonna is created by Loretta Proctor, an eGlobal Creative Publishing Signed Author



The Glass Madonna

The two young men walked on over the once-cultivated area until they reached a broad flight of steps from the village that led up to the keep. The white stone walls of the erstwhile Venetian fortress rose tall and forbidding above them, the top now crumbling away in ruins. The walls here were covered in delicate vines that sent tendrils right up the sides. Over the entrance arch was the faint trace of the Venetian lion that had once adorned it. 


Climbing the steps, they came to the door of the keep and stopped to look around them. From this point, high upon the side of the rocky isle, they had a lovely view of the dark fathomless sea below them. Today it lay still and flat with an indescribable sense of menacing heaviness upon it, like a weight.


'Poseidon is angry today,' mused Petros. 'He has always been angry with us Cretans.'


Chapter 38: A terrifying discovery