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.

http://karenbarrowbooks.com

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Karen Barrow is a Trinidad-born Canadian author whose debut novel, Palmyra, won the 2024 Whistler Independent Book Award for Fiction and was a finalist for the Guernica Prize, the Page Turner Awards, and the Eric Hoffer Award. Her second novel, Dreams of the Alhambra, was published in Spring 2026. A lifelong traveller, Barrow draws inspiration from the cultures and landscapes she encounters, bringing a vivid sense of place to her fiction. She currently lives in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley. For more information, visit karenbarrowbooks.com.

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