The Thief Fleet: Unwanted, unwilling, unruly, they will lay the foundations of a worldwide empire... (The Alchemy of Distance Book 1)

Fourteen hundred and twenty men, women, and children - naval, military, civilians, some free, the rest in chains - are shipped halfway around the globe from England to the South Pacific. Months later, at the end of the longest voyage of its kind in the Age of Sail, the Thief Fleet casts anchor on the forested shores of an unexplored continent yet to be named Australia. Unwanted and unwilling, these unruly migrants are tough and cunning or they could never have survived eighteenth century England's jails and the starvation years that still lay ahead of them. Despite every obstacle and hardship, some are destined to become men and women of wealth and power they could never have dared to imagine in their Old Country of inherited class and privilege. Two rivals dominate London's transplanted underworld of muggers and stranglers, whores and pickpockets, the grim redcoat veteran Joe "Tinderbox" Cribb, and the resolute Irish actress "Mrs" Catherine Brandon. Hunger and necessity will force this most unlikely of couples to sink their differences and, as they do so, establish a colonial dynasty that will shape Australia's dramatic and inspiring story.