Jack Yang, orphaned during a horrific incident in the Tai Ping Revolution in China, and his friend Charlie Lam seek their fortunes in the tin mines in Emu Flat, North-East Tasmania. The mines attract fortune-hunters of all kinds: a crooked mine manager and his muscle-bound minder; Terry Conway and Lizzie Wiggins, working girls in search of a better life; Master Mou in search of spiritual riches; and the psychopathic Wu Ying, in search of victims, or 'cracked eggs', to suck dry. Terry sees Jack as the man she came to find, but Jack, certain that Wu Ying is the man who destroyed his family, is too

obsessed with exacting a savage revenge.

John Biggs, a fifth generation Tasmanian, spent most of his professional life outside Tasmania. But as the Chinese proverb says, a falling leaf returns to its roots; accordingly, John retired from the University of Hong Kong to return to his home state in order to concentrate on writing fiction. His special interest is in writing what he calls Sino-Australian fusion, as in several short stories and in his novels 'The Girl in the Golden House', 'Disguises' (disguising himself as 'Sally Leigh') and now 'Tin Dragons'.