The Cloud Leopard’s Daughter, 2016

It is 1863 and Kitty and Rian Farrell have sailed their schooner Katipo III into Dunedin Harbour to answer a call for help from their friend Wong Fu. His daughter, Bao, has been kidnapped and taken to opium-ridden China.

The Farrells agree to retrieve the missing Bao. But as they sail closer to their quarry the stakes jump dramatically. And little do they know that the deadliest threat lies in their midst.

The Cloud Leopard's Daughter takes us through dangerous and unpredictable shoals of love, lust, greed and opium, in search of not one, but two firey yet vulnerable women – puppets in other people's calculated games. 

… Was an urge to find out about the Opium wars, Chinese pirates and 19th century Hong Kong. And the thing about having characters who live on a ship – they can go anywhere! The Smuggler's Wife series is quite organic. I haven't planned it in careful detail the way I usually plan my series, so each book turns up whenever I get around to it and the story line isn't necessarily that connected to the previous one. God knows where Kitty and Rian will end up next.      

'The historical settings and an adventurous storyline feel like the perfect blend of fact and fiction … This was gripping. I raced through it and wish I'd savoured it more.'   

Weekend Herald, NZ, 3/12/16