Deborah Challinor is an Australian writer and a historian. Her first novel Behind the Sun, was released in December, 2012. The second, Girl of Shadows, was released in 2013. She attended Waikato University where she completed a Ph.D in New Zealand military history in 1998. All her historical novels have appeared in the top five of the New Zealand fiction bestseller list, six reaching number one. Deborah has also written non-fiction - Grey Ghosts, based on the research she did for her Ph.D. on New Zealander soldiers and the Vietnam War, and Who'll Stop the Rain?, about the effects of Agent Orange on the children of New Zealand's Vietnam veterans. In 1995 she won a New Zealand Returned and ServicesÂŋ Association Military History Scholarship, and in 1997 received a New Zealand History Research Trust Fund Award and funding from the New Zealand Lottery Grants Board for the first edition of Grey Ghosts. In 2015 her title's Tamar, Blue Smoke, White Feathers, Band of Gold, Kitty and Amber made The New Zealand Best Seller List.