Photo by Robert Cross. Draft of Mary Rose by David Meagher

BOOKS


NOVELS
Deadly Shoals
Run Afoul
Shark Island
A Watery Grave
A Promise of Gold
Murder at the Brian Boru (sequel)
Abigail


MARITIME HISTORY
Island of the Lost
In the Wake of Madness
Rough Medicine
She Captains
Hen Frigates
The Sailing Circle (with Mary Anne Wallace)
Captain's Daughter, Coasterman's Wife
She Was a Sister Sailor
Petticoat Whalers
Fulbright in New Zealand
Exotic Intruders


My Works

Joan with a copy of Tupaia's chart in the Beaglehole Library, Wellington. Photo by Robert Cross

A Watery Grave
In the first book of the Wiki Coffin maritime mystery series, Wiki embarks as linguister for the US Exploring Expedition. Though beset by enemies, and under a cloud of suspicion himself, his mission is to expose a vicious, opportunistic murderer.

Shark Island
Forsythe leads Wiki and George into dangerous waters where both sharks and men kill

Run Afoul
Ordered by Captain Wilkes to shift his berth to the flagship Vincennes, Wiki is faced with a whole new set of trials and tribulations, not the least being blamed for the sudden grave illness of one of the scientific corps. Could Wiki have ever imagined that his former arch-enemy, Lieut. Forsythe, would be all that stands between him and a terrible fate?

Deadly Shoals
Contracted to track down the man who stole a sealing schooner, instead Wiki Coffin finds a skull at the foot of a sacred Gualichu tree in the stark hinterland of the Rio Negro.

Island of the Lost: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World
The amazing story of two sets of castaways who were wrecked on the same desolate, uninhabited island at the same time, but never came into contact with each other. They were faced with the same challenge but met it with different attitudes -- a contrast that made all the difference between life and death.

In the Wake of Madness
Having spent my life immersed in Pacific culture, I was convinced that the truth behind the murder of Norris by three Islanders had never been told. Nothing, though, prepared me for the horror I found in the private journals and papers of two crew members of the Sharon, the third officer, Benjamin Clough, and Andrew White, the ship’s cooper. The story they revealed gave me nightmares, but I was compelled to set the record straight.

She Captains
Bold women distinguished for courageous enterprise on the high seas.


Rough Medicine
The strange adventures of the medical men who tended to the hard-drinking, hard-living crews of South Seamen.


Hen Frigates
Stories of the brave, flamboyant wives of merchant captains who voyaged the world on sailing ships.


She Was a Sister Sailor
The Whaling Journals of Mary Brewster, wife of Captain William Brewster of Stonington, Connecticut, who defied convention and her family to go along with him on voyage -- and became the first American woman to set foot in the western Arctic.


Selected Works

A first Wiki Coffin Mystery
A Watery Grave
Murder most foul in Portsmouth, Virginia, is solved in the middle of the Atlantic.
A Wiki Coffin maritime mystery
Shark Island
Pirate-hunting on the coast of Brazil
A Wiki Coffin Mystery
Run Afoul
Wiki Coffin must clear his father's name of murder in this third seafaring mystery set aboard the U.S. Exploring Expedition
A Wiki Coffin mystery set in Patagonia
Deadly Shoals
Wiki Coffin joins the Patagonian gauchos to solve a grotesque murder
Castaway drama
Island of the Lost: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World
A gripping tale of two starkly contrasting castaway experiences
Revenge at Sea
In the Wake of Madness
Murder and rebellion on the whaleship Sharon.
Women Under Sail
She Captains
Heroines and hellions of the sea.
Hen Frigates
Captains' wives at sea.
She Was a Sister Sailor
The Whaling Journals of Mary Brewster.
Surgeons under sail.
Rough Medicine
Whaling surgeons in South Seas.