The Shanghai Tunnel

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Portland, 1868. It is a rough hewn place, an exploding trading post that has dreams of becoming a metropolis.

Horace Stratton, one of Portland's wealthiest heirs, has decided to come home for good after amassing yet another fortune in Shanghai. With him comes his wife Emily, a shy daughter of missionaries, and their teenaged son. On the brink of that happy return, Horace suddenly falls ill and dies in San Francisco.

Emily and her son bring her husband home to Portland and they try to settle into this new culture. While they look as if they should belong, Portland is a strange and unsettling place for them.

Emily is guilt-ridden, but sorrow is one of the few emotions she didn't feel when told of her husband's passing. For Emily had learned more about her husband's past than anyone would believe. And she discovers that all of his schemes did not die with him.

His partners very much want Emily and her son to go away... by whatever means necessary. Emily will have to delve into her husband's seedy and painful past and set things right so that she can make a life for herself and her son in this strange land.

Reviews

“Readers looking for quality historical fiction ought to add Newman’s name to their lists of must-read authors. Newman offers absorbing stories with well-drawn sympathetic characters.” —Mystery Scene

“Newman mixes moral complexity and careful research to tell an entertaining tale.” —Publishers Weekly on Heresy

“An unforgettable tale of vengeance and love and cruelty and death…Sharan Newman creates memorable characters who spring off the page breathing, crying, singing, laughing, as completely realistic as any people I have met. It is rare to find a book so historically accurate and enjoyable to read as this one is.” —Mystery News on Cursed in the Blood

“Colorful characters and thoroughly researched culture add up to wonderful historical fiction.” —Library Journal on Strong As Death

About the Author

Sharan Newman is a medieval historian and author. She took her Master’s degree in Medieval Literature at Michigan State University and then did her doctoral work at the University of California at Santa Barbara in Medieval Studies, specializing in twelfth-century France. She is a member of the Medieval Academy and the Medieval Association of the Pacific.

Rather than teach, Newman chose to use her education to write novels set in the Middle Ages, including three Arthurian fantasies and more than half a dozen mysteries set in twelfth-century France, featuring Catherine LeVendeur, a one-time student of Heloise at the Paraclete; her husband, Edgar, an Anglo-Scot; and Solomon, a Jewish merchant of Paris. The books focus on the life of the bourgeoisie and minor nobility and also the uneasy relations between Christians and Jews at that time. They also incorporate events of the twelfth-century such as the Second Crusade and the rise of the Cathars.

The Catherine Levendeur mysteries have been nominated for many awards. Sharan won the Macavity Award for best first mystery for Death Comes As Epiphany, the Herodotus Award for best historical mystery for Cursed in the Blood, and The Witch in the Well won the Bruce Alexander award for best historical mystery.

Her mystery The Shanghai Tunnel is set in Portland in 1868.

Newman has also written non-fiction books, including The Real History Behind the Da Vince Code and The Real History Behind the Templars.

Newman lives on a mountainside in Oregon.

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Book Details

Imprint: Forge Books

Genre: Mystery

ISBN: 9781429911092

Page Count: 336

On Sale:

April 1, 2010

Books By Sharan Newman