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  The Nutmeg Tree - A Novel

  Margery Sharp

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  In 1930s France, a free-spirited mother undertakes to derail her very proper daughter’s engagement   Julia Packett has barely laid eyes on her daughter, Susan, since leaving her with her well-heeled in-laws following the loss of her husband in World War I. Now thirty-seven, Julia’s lack of prospects hasn’t dimmed her spirit or her appetite for life. But when Susan asks her to come to France for the summer to persuade her grandmother to allow her to marry, she sets sail with the noblest intentions of acting the paragon of motherhood.   At her mother-in-law’s vacation villa in Haute Savoie, however, Julia sees that her priggish but lovely daughter is completely mismatched with a man much more suited to herself: a charming, clever playboy. The arrival of Susan’s legal guardian, the distinguished Sir William Waring, further complicates the situation.   Soon Julia’s efforts to pass herself off as a lady and secure her daughter’s happiness spin out of control, leading to romantic entanglements and madcap adventures that will challenge preconceived notions about the ultimate compatibility of any two people who fall in love.

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  Benevolence

  Julie Janson

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  NOMINATED FOR THE MARK & EVETTE MORAN NIB LITERARY AWARD 
   
  For perhaps the first time in novel form, Benevolence presents an important era in Australia’s history from an Aboriginal perspective. Told through the fictional characterisation of Darug woman Muraging (Mary James), Benevolence is a compelling story of first contact. Born around 1813, Muraging is among the earliest Darug generations to experience the impact of British colonisation – a time of cataclysmic change and violence, but also remarkable survival and resistance. 
   
  At an early age Muraging is given over to the Parramatta Native School by her Darug father. Fleeing the school in pursuit of love, she embarks on a journey of discovery and a search for a safe place to make her home. Spanning the years 1816–35, Benevolence is set around the Hawkesbury River area, the home of the Darug people, in Parramatta and Sydney. 
   
  Julie Janson’s intensely visual prose interweaves historical events with detailed characterisation – she shatters stereotypes and gives voice to an Aboriginal experience of early-settlement. 
   
  "Janson's writing is evocative...The shame of colonisation is amplified by the proud complexities of the narrative...Muraging's – and Janson's – refusal to perform the victim to voyeurs of trauma is an act of defiance." SUNDAY AGE 
   
  "The gut-truths presented in Benevolence are tied to a larger reckoning needed in Australian society – one that involves a centring of First Nation voices, a willingness to address not just a violent history, but a hostile and violent present." HAYLEY SCRIVENOR, Mascara Literary Review 
   
  "Benevolence is a searing, unforgettable work...this novel is of immense importance" JOY LAWN, Paperbark Words] 
   
  "The text’s undulation evokes the ever-changing interactions between settlers and Aboriginal populations following settlement, giving voice to an oft-overlooked Aboriginal perspective." AUSTRALIAN BOOK REVIEW 
   
  “Janson’s descriptions are beautifully lyrical...compelling." SUE TERRY Whispering Gums 
   
   “How good it is to hear a Darug voice speaking of Darug history.”  KATE GRENVILLE

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  A Lady of Quality

  Frances Hodgson Burnett

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  A Lady of Quality (1897) is a historical novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett.  Excerpt from the book:  "On a wintry morning at the close of 1690, the sun shining faint and red through a light fog, there was a great noise of baying dogs, loud voices, and trampling of horses in the courtyard at Wildairs Hall; Sir Jeoffry being about to go forth a-hunting, and being a man with a choleric temper and big, loud voice, and given to oaths and noise even when in good-humour, his riding forth with his friends at any time was attended with boisterous commotion. This morning it was more so than usual, for he had guests with him who had come to his house the day before, and had supped late and drunk deeply, whereby the day found them, some with headaches, some with a nausea at their stomachs, and some only in an evil humour which made them curse at their horses when they were restless, and break into loud surly laughs when a coarse joke was made. There were many such jokes..."

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  A Time for Swords - A gripping...

  Matthew Harffy

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  When the Vikings attack, a novice monk's life is changed forever in Matthew Harffy's new historical adventure. 
   
  Lindisfarne, AD793. There had been portents – famine, whirlwinds, lightning from clear skies, serpents seen flying through the air. But when the raiders came, no one was prepared. They came from the North, their dragon-prowed longships gliding out of the dawn mist as they descended on the kingdom's most sacred site. It is 8th June AD 793, and with the pillage of the monastery on Lindisfarne, the Viking Age has begun. While his fellow monks flee before the Norse onslaught, one young novice stands his ground. He has been taught to turn the other cheek, but faced with the slaughter of his brothers and the pagan desecration of his church, forgiveness is impossible. 
   
  “Harffy's writing just gets better and better ... He is really proving himself the rightful heir to Gemmell's crown” - JEMAHL EVANS

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  How Green Was My Valley

  Richard Llewellyn

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  The international-bestselling winner of the National Book Award and the basis for the Academy Award–winning film directed by John Ford.   Huw Morgan remembers the days when his home valley was prosperous, verdant, and beautiful—before the mines came to town. The youngest son of a respectable mining family in South Wales, he is now the only one left in the valley, and his reminiscences tell the story of a family and a town both defined and ruined by the mines.   Huw’s story is both joyful and heartrending—a portrait of a place and a people existing now only in memory.   Full of memorable characters, richly crafted language, and surprising humor, How Green Was My Valley is the first of four books chronicling Huw’s life, including the sequels Up into the Singing Mountain, Down Where the Moon is Small, and Green, Green My Valley Now.   “The reader emerges from these tense pages strangely aglow with sharing the happiness of the characters . . . The simplicity of the language and its delicately strange flavor give the book added charm.” —Chicago Tribune

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  The Wright Sister - A Novel

  Patty Dann

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  An epistolary novel of historical fiction that imagines the life of Katharine Wright and her relationship with her famous brothers, Wilbur and Orville Wright. 
  On December 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright flew the world’s first airplane at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, establishing the Wright Brothers as world-renowned pioneers of flight. Known to far fewer people was their whip-smart and well-educated sister Katharine, a suffragette and early feminist. 
  After Wilbur passed away, Katharine lived with and took care of her increasingly reclusive brother Orville, who often turned to his more confident and supportive sister to help him through fame and fortune. But when Katharine became engaged to their mutual friend, Harry Haskell, Orville felt abandoned and betrayed. He smashed a pitcher of flowers against a wall and refused to attend the wedding or speak to Katharine or Harry. As the years went on, the siblings grew further and further apart.  
  In The Wright Sister, Patty Dann wonderfully imagines the blossoming of Katharine, revealed in her “Marriage Diary”—in which she emerges as a frank, vibrant, intellectually and socially engaged, sexually active woman coming into her own—and her one-sided correspondence with her estranged brother as she hopes to repair their fractured relationship. Even though she pictures “Orv” throwing her letters away, Katharine cannot contain her joie de vivre, her love of married life, her strong advocacy of the suffragette cause, or her abiding affection for her stubborn sibling as she fondly recalls their shared life. 
  An inspiring and poignant chronicle of feminism, family, and forgiveness, The Wright Sister is an unforgettable portrait of a woman, a sister of inventors, who found a way to reinvent herself.

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