A clever and entertaining romp of a novel that is an alluring fusion of history, comedy and parody. After the unusual death of their papa, Adele Overend and her younger brother Godwin are dispatched from comfortable Autumn Hall in Yorkshire to the uttermost ends of the earth - gold rush Dunedin in 1864. Even worse for the grieving pair, they must travel on separate vessels. Self-possessed and practical Adele discovers herself cast up on an inhospitable island occupied by a misfit band of sealers. Godwin arrives on the rim of civilisation to find his sister vanished and nobody willing to employ an unusually pretty boy. Their adventures lead them into a series of mishaps and self-reinventions. What a catalogue: shipwreck, murder, renegade scientists, nasty doctors, a brothel, an asylum, urchins, a remarkable baby, lost relations, cross-dressing, dwarf wrestling, pyrotechnics, concealed identities, quackery, highway robbery, strange religious cults, bridled passions heaving under the stays. It is Shakespearean and yet Victorian, gothic and melodramatic, wise, high spirited, and tender. 'deep and brilliant' Mark Peters, The Listener 'a glorious portrayal of feminist-minded womanhood, familial intrigue, gender subversion and old-fashioned match-making set in 19th century Yorkshire and Otago.' - NZ Herald

Author Biography

Barbara Else is the author of numerous bestselling adult novels and books for children, and has edited a number of collections of stories for children, as well as an anthology in which top New Zealand writers talk about grandparenthood. With her husband, writer Chris Else, Barbara runs TFS, a Wellington-based literary agency and assessment service. See more at www.elseware.co.nz or follow her blog at www.TalesofFontania.com. The New Zealand Herald reviewer, commenting on the 'quieter, deeper' humour in Barbra's writing, said it is 'found in her dark, sardonic point of skew, in her quirky, wry vignettes that are a fond satire of modern middle class life and those who live it ...' Her first novel, The Warrior Queen, was shortlisted for the Montana New Zealand Book Awards. Her children's fiction has won a host of awards, including a 2012 White Raven Award and the 2012 NZ IBBY for The Travelling Restaurant. She was the Victoria University of Wellington Writer in Residence for 1999, received a Creative New Zealand Scholarship in Letters in 2004, and was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to literature in 2005.