A 16th-century chateau hides Claudia Spencer's teenage hell. Living a modern-gothic nightmare as the ward of 'ancient people' and the 'evil Gatekeeper', her imagination bleeds into reality as she suffers loneliness, abuse and confusion. A caravan of gypsies arrive on the property and secrets of her past unravel with lessons of magic, gypsy lore, spirituality and first love. Shedding her fears, Claudia struggles internally as she discovers the power of her own magic and launches on a quest for freedom, belonging and love. From the Czech countryside, to the astral plane and the gritty streets of London, escape means daring adventure on a blazing trail of loss, heartache and betrayal.

A divorcee from London, who is a journalist by profession, falls in love with a gypsy girl while on a holiday in Goa. He marries her and settles down at Palolem for good. They have children and begin a humble life, exploring Goa, seeking a place in the tourism industry, but our Londoner gets entangled in Goa’s narcotic world. Thereafter, the story gets intriguing and absorbing with the turn of events. Does he escape back to England, or continue to stay in Goa? What happens to his gypsy queen and their dream of living in ahouse by the sea?

Gypsies, Egyptians, Romanies, and—more recently—Travellers. Who are these marginal and mysterious people who first arrived in England in early Tudor times? Are claims of their distant origins on the Indian subcontinent true, or just another of the many myths and stories that have accreted around them over time? Can they even be regarded as a single people or ethnicity at all? Gypsies have frequently been vilified, and not much less frequently romanticized, by the settled population over the centuries. Social historian David Cressy now attempts to disentangle the myth from the reality of Gypsy life over more than half a millennium of English history. In this, the first comprehensive historical study of the doings and dealings of Gypsies in England, he draws on original archival research, and a wide range of reading, to trace the many moments when Gypsy lives became entangled with those of villagers and townsfolk, religious and secular authorities, and social and moral reformers. Crucially, it is a story not just of the Gypsy community and its peculiarities, but also of England's treatment of that community, from draconian Elizabethan statutes, through various degrees of toleration and fascination, right up to the tabloid newspaper campaigns against Gypsy and Traveller encampments of more recent years.