1689 and the wife of English East India Company Governor Elihu Yale risks the six-month sea voyage from old Madras to her home in London with her youngest children. But after twenty years away, it’s a city Catherine now barely recognises - built anew after the Great Fire and occupied by William the Third’s soldiers in the wake of the Glorious Revolution. Yet some things never change, and the secrets she thought she’d left behind in Fort St. George soon return to torment her. An old rival, a long-lost friend and a bitter enemy soon draw her back into a world of espionage, revenge and brutal danger. Her husband may still be on the far side of the world but his reach seems very long indeed.

Ebsworth has used historical fiction tools skillfully to put together Catherine Yale’s astonishing story, essentially from the blank space in her husband’s will. Recommended.

Waheed Rabbani, Historical Novel Society and author of the ‘Azadi’ series

Mistress Yale is a phenomenon - compassionate and courageous, she misses nothing and viewing the seventeenth century world through her well-travelled eyes is a rare treat. A feat of immaculate research and world-building.

Deborah Swift, best-selling author of ‘Pleasing Mister Pepys’, ‘A Divided Inheritance’ and the ‘Highway’ series