Wikipedia page about this book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Roi_des_montagnes

Release date is 2013-02-15

E-text prepared by sp1nd, Mary Meehan, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive (http://archive.org)

"The King of the Mountains" by Edmond About is a French novel published in 1857. A German botanist searching for rare plants in Greece is kidnapped alongside a wealthy English mother and daughter by Hadgi-Stavros, a legendary brigand chief who once fought for Greek independence. As ransom demands mount and supposed rescuers prove corrupt, the captives discover that survival depends on navigating a treacherous world where heroism and villainy blur, and even escape may not bring the expected rewards. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Original publication data not identified