It was as fine a day to be whipped as any he'd ever seen but the good weather didn't make Peregrine James any happier with the situation he was in. Unfairly convicted of a crime he had not committed, the young cook was strung from the whipping post on the Plymouth quayside when he caught the eye of Francis Drake and managed to convince the charismatic sea captain to accept him among his crew. Soon England was receding in their wake and Perry was serving an unsavory collection of sea dogs as the small fleet of fragile wood ships sailed across the deep brine. Their destination was secret, known to Drake alone. Few sailors believed the public avowal that the expedition was headed for Alexandria to trade in currants. Some men suspected Drake planned a raid across Panama to attack the Spanish in the Pacific. Others were sure the real plan was to round the Cape of Storms to break the Portuguese monopoly of the spice trade. The only thing Perry knew for certain was that they were bound for danger and that he must live by his wits if he were to survive serving at Drake's command.

It is indeed a Universe of Miracles But not for young Pimsol Anderts, idle and jobless on a depressed, waterlogged world, until he signs aboard the interstellar freighter Miraculous Abernathy. Indentured to the aristocratic Wirthy family-and bewitched by beautiful Mirable Wirthy, the latest clone of the long-dead matriarch Imogene Wirthy-Pim's adventure has barely begun when pirates attack, forcing him to flee the ship with Mirable in tow. Suddenly they are castaways on the primitive planet Temurlone. Separated from his beloved by the Marvelous Flying Bicycle Men and doomed to hard labor in the Temurlone meat mines, Pim knows that nothing can keep him from the woman who is his destiny. He will brave any trial an uncaring God puts before him-escaping the sensuous seductions of the Man Mother, surviving the culinary horrors of the cannibal innkeeper Harmony Repute, courageously facing the threat of eternal toil in the sweatshops of Charming Corners-in the name of love. With the original and satiric Castaway on Temurlone, author David Wesley Hill has boldly reconfigured the venerable space opera into an action-packed parable for our times.