The Wheel O' Fortune

Dick Royson is broke and watching unemployed men march through London when a runaway carriage nearly kills a young woman. He saves Miss Fenshawe, meets the mysterious Baron von Kerber, and is offered a job aboard the yacht Aphrodite, a vessel that promises both purpose and danger in equal measure. What follows is a swift, entertaining dive into a world of shifting fortunes, dangerous secrets, and a young man discovering that fate has sharper edges than he imagined. Tracy writes with the pacing of a journalist who knows how to hook a reader, and the story moves with the confidence of 1916 adventure fiction at its most assured. There's something irresistibly old-school about watching an ordinary man tumble into extraordinary circumstances, especially when the world itself was on the brink of everything changing. For readers who want their adventures compact, their heroes relatable, and their period pieces to actually feel of the period, this delivers.