Katie Hickman

1611. After ten years in the Orient, Celia Lamprey and her husband Paul Pindar have returned to England, bringing with them a legendary diamond, despite the curse that surrounds it. All of London wants to get their hands on the jewel, but Paul Pindar might be the only merchant who doesn't have a price...

The first British women to set foot in India did so in the very early seventeenth century. As wives, courtesans and she-merchants, these tough adventuring women were every bit as intrepid as their men, the buccaneering sea captains and traders in whose wake they followed. Through diaries, letters and memoirs, this exciting book reveals the extraordinary life and times of hundreds of women who made their way across the sea and changed history.