Deborah Challinor Books in Order

In late 1872, Sydney undertaker Tatty Crowe travels to Auckland to embalm a client's father, only for the job to end in disaster that leaves her shaken. Back home, coffins begin disappearing from funeral trains, and Tatty must uncover who is sabotaging her business and why.

By 1871, widowed undertaker Tatty Crowe runs a thriving Sydney funeral firm, until she notices how many young women are dying after botched abortions. A devastating loss and rumours of baby farming push her into the city's slums and courts to expose those profiting from desperate mothers.

In 1865, orphaned Londoner Tatiana 'Tatty' Caldwell emigrates to Sydney and apprentices at Crowe Funeral Services, fascinated by Victorian mourning rituals and early embalming. When her husband and mentor Titus dies and she is accused of murdering him, Tatty must fight ruthless rivals to save her reputation and business.

Set in 1969, this novel follows nurse Rowie Leonard in Vietnam and her younger sister Jo, an anti war folk singer who joins a touring band to see her soldier boyfriend. Both are forced to question everything they believe about the war.

Polly Manaia, a Māori exotic dancer in 1960s Kings Cross, is desperate to bring her eleven year old daughter from New Zealand to live with her. With flatmates Rhoda and Star she builds a fragile found family while battling addiction, stigma and old secrets.

In booming 1950s Auckland, cosmetics saleswoman Allie Manaia is still haunted by a deadly department store fire. As wealthy client Kathleen Lawson takes an unsettling interest in her Māori husband Sonny, and Polly Manaia chases a wilder life, friendships and marriages are tested by changing times.

Set in 1830s Sydney, this Convict Girls novel centres on Harrie Clarke, a transported seamstress learning the art of tattooing while hiding a terrible shared crime. As crime boss Bella Jackson's blackmail escalates and love with James Downey finally beckons, Harrie's sanity and safety hang in the balance.

Kitty and Rian Farrell sail their schooner into gold rush era Dunedin after a plea from old friend Wong Fu, who reveals he is leader of a Chinese tong and his daughter Bao has been kidnapped to opium soaked China. Their rescue mission quickly becomes far more dangerous and personal.

In 1832, three years after their transportation, Friday, Sarah and Harrie are carving out fragile lives in Sydney when Harrie's adopted daughter Charlotte is abducted to Newcastle. To save her, the women must risk their hard won freedom and confront enemies who know exactly how to hurt them.

Now working out their sentences in 1830 Sydney, Friday, Harrie and Sarah have been separated into brothel, household and shop work, but remain bound by a secret killing. Underworld queen Bella Jackson's hold tightens, guilt and drink haunt the friends, and one of them will need rescuing again.

Irreverent prostitute Friday Woolfe meets clever thief Sarah Morgan, steady Harriet Clarke and naive Rachel Winter in London's Newgate Gaol before they are shipped to New South Wales. Packed into a women's transport and later the Parramatta Female Factory, the four forge a fierce friendship that may be all that keeps them alive.

After a catastrophic flood on the Ballarat goldfields, sea captain Rian Farrell vanishes and his wife Kitty is left certain she is a widow. Grief drives her into the arms of loyal shipmate Daniel, but life among miners, schemers and old enemies soon tests her courage and her heart.

Scottish immigrant Isla McKinnon is orphaned as a teenager and taken in by a Taranaki Māori family, eventually marrying a Māori farmer. As the New Zealand Wars tear communities apart, she is forced back into Pākehā Auckland society and must choose between two worlds that both claim her.

In an unnamed New Zealand city in 1953, four young women working at glamorous department store Dawsons dream of promotion, romance and escape. When fire breaks out just before Christmas and management delays sounding the alarm, their ordinary workday turns into a fight for survival.

Years after scandal sent her to the colonies, Kitty Farrell is sailing the Pacific with her husband Rian when a grimy Māori street child offers her a trinket in the Bay of Islands. Taking the girl she names Amber changes their marriage just as war erupts and loyalties are tested.

In 1838, impoverished English gentlewoman Kitty Carlisle is banished to New Zealand with her stern missionary uncle after a scandal ruins her reputation. In the wild Bay of Islands and later Sydney, she falls for enigmatic captain Rian Farrell and is swept into gunrunning, war and dangerous entanglements.

Set during the 1951 Waikato miners' strike, Union woman Ellen McCabe supports her union leader husband as emergency regulations and bitter politics tear their village apart. When charismatic war veteran Jack Vaughan arrives, she must confront divided loyalties in both her marriage and her community.

Beginning with the 1931 Napier earthquake that nearly kills her, matriarch Tamar Murdoch watches a new generation of Murdochs come of age amid depression and looming war. As grandchildren march off to Spain and Europe, the family's story moves into the turbulent mid 20th century.

As World War I looms, former brothel keeper Tamar Murdoch now presides over prosperous Kenmore estate but her adult children are pulled toward the fighting. Illegitimate son Joseph is determined to join the Māori Battalion while his siblings wrestle with duty, conscience and love in a country changing forever.

Nonfiction account of five New Zealand families living with the legacy of Agent Orange exposure from the Vietnam War. Drawing on interviews with veterans and their loved ones, it traces illness, grief and a long campaign for recognition in the face of official indifference.

Seventeen year old Tamar Deane leaves her Cornish village in 1879 for a new life in Auckland, befriended on the quay by flamboyant brothel keeper Myrna McTaggert. Through disastrous choices, scandal and unexpected good fortune, she builds a family whose future will be shaped by distant wars.

This oral history brings together the voices of fifty New Zealand Vietnam veterans, recounting combat, camaraderie and the aftermath of war. It explores issues such as post traumatic stress, Agent Orange exposure and the painful struggle to gain acknowledgment back home.