“Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty” Thomas Jefferson, 1796. 'Violet Thistle', the first book in the trilogy, is a dystopian adaptation by Coll MacLaren of Baroness Emmuska Orczy’s ‘The Scarlet Pimpernel’. Three bolts of electricity … the next batch of Liberals ‘dance’, ‘writhe’, then fatally ‘clinch’ on the executioner’s ghastly Electroline. The right-wing Partisan mob roars as the Retributions are delivered. It is a scene from the French Revolution with slaughter on the grisly guillotine, yet this is the Apostolic States of America, in 2092. Meggie Fergusson, a young actress from Beverly Hills, has a fearful problem. How can she save her brother without sacrificing her husband, the love of her life? She has the perception of an intelligent thespian and the exquisite majesty of a beautiful Nubian woman; will those qualities be enough? Her Scottish husband is a wealthy dandy and Atlantic schooner fleet owner, but he seems detached. A secretive League of Hebridean buccaneers enrages the brutal regime of the Apostolic States by rescuing fugitive Liberals and sailing them across the Atlantic to safe Scottish havens. Will their leader be discovered and captured? How will Meggie solve her terrible dilemma? “I love where Coll MacLaren has taken this classic!”