Young, beautiful and wealthy, widow Charlotte Macleod, leaves Batavia in the 1850s and returns to Singapore for the English education of her two young sons. She is determined not to be drawn back into a secret affair with Chinese triad-member Zhen. Drawing on the real-life historical personalities of the time, Dawn Farnham deftly mixes fact and fiction to paint a vivid portrait of mid-nineteenth century Singapore at a time when triads, piracy and crime were rife.

• The Shallow Seas: A Tale of Two Cities: Singapore and Batavia (The Straits Quartet)
• The English Concubine: Passion and Power in 1860's Singapore (The Straits Quartet)
• The Red Thread: A Chinese Tale of Love and Fate in 1830s Singapore (The Straits Quartet)
• The Samurai's Garden
• A Crowd of Twisted Things