On Teaser Tuesdays readers are asked to:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between 7 and 12 lines.
• You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given.

I love a rollicking ocean-going adventure as much as the next girl, and I also love period mysteries, so when I was offered the opportunity to review William Dietrich’s latest novel, The Barbary Pirates, I took a break from packing for a trip and writing about online life insurance to respond with a heartfelt “Yes! Please!.”

The book (an uncorrected proof of the novel) arrived while I was away, and I’m on a few pages into it, but I had to share. Remember, this text is quoted from an ARC and may differ from the final copy, on sale on March 30th.

The tunnel kept getting narrower, however, squeezing down toward my head. I scraped several times, and could feel the trickle of blood from my crown. It was getting hard to breathe, the air stale, and finally my shoulders wedged and I could go no farther. Utterly dark, no hope ahead, and as I patted with my hands I could feel nothing but enclosing rock. I probed with my rifle, which only confirmed the passage constricted still more, far too small to wriggle through. Cuvier bumped up against the soles of my boots, and grunted.

“What’s wrong, Ethan?”

“I’m stuck!” I couldn’t get the room to even go backward. “This isn’t the way out, there’s no air. We have to go back to that little chasm we crawled over and go down.”

“Go down? Merde, I’m longing to go up!”