Category: Historical Fiction

Retrieving a lost life from the historical black box

13/11/2023

WIFEDOM: MRS ORWELL'S INVISIBLE LIFE
By Anna Funder

The result of author Anna Funder’s plunge into the historical “black box” of George Orwell's wife Eileen O'Shaughnessy is a biography quite unlike any I’ve ever read.

Published by Penguin, July 2023 | Fiction, Memoir, Australian Author

Power of words shine in brilliantly imagined slice of history

24/7/2023

Published by Affirm Press, March 2023 | Historical Fiction

THE BOOKBINDER OF JERICHO
By Pip Williams

A perfect companion to Pip Williams’ wildly successful debut, The Bookbinder of Jericho explores the power in words by weaving a brilliantly imagined story around a slice of very real history, with a cast of women who rise in the face of the brutal upheaval of World War One.

Titillating Hollywood tale

26/2/2023

Published by Simon & Schuster 2017 | Fiction

THE SEVEN HUSBANDS OF EVELYN HUGO
By Taylor Jenkins Reid

Splintering the mythical splendour of Hollywood’s golden age, this tale provides a titillating and entertaining (although, truth be told, not terribly challenging) exploration of the price of fame.

Small kindnesses triumph in this WWII epic

8/10/2022

Published by 4th Estate 2014 | Fiction

ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE
By Anthony Doerr

Anthony Doerr’s Pulitzer Prize winning 2014 novel All The Light We Cannot See is a captivating story celebrating the small triumphs scattered among the tragedies experienced by many during the second world war.

Darwin shines in this Aussie allegorical quest

22/7/2022

ALL OUR SHIMMERING SKIES
By Trent Dalton

As young gravedigger Molly Hook’s odyssey unfolds, bleakness gives way to an almost mystical narrative, ripe with the comical, sensory, over-the-top feels for which Trent Dalton has become known.

Published by Fourth Estate, December 2020 | Fiction

Quirky, sensory thriller unveils power of scent

15/3/2022

PERFUME: THE STORY OF A MURDERER
By Patrick Suskind

A terrifyingly humorous and sinister examination of blind obsession, explored through the mind of a man who perceives the world not through vision but by smell.

Published by Penguin | 1985 | Historical Fiction

A stunning tale that will hook all word lovers

26/1/2022

THE DICTIONARY OF LOST WORDS
By Pip Williams

In a wonderfully original debut, Pip Williams weaves a moving and brilliantly imagined fictional story around the very real case of a word quite literally lost as the Oxford English Dictionary was compiled.

Published by Affirm Press 2020 | Historical Fiction, Australian author

A lyrical love story entwined in an epic pilgrimage

24/10/2021

DEVOTION
by Hannah Kent

True to form, Hannah Kent’s intense, lyrical prose is utterly immersive in her new novel, Devotion, a love story entwined within a fascinating historical context.

Published by Pan Macmillan-Picador, October 2021 | Fiction, Australian, Women, Historical

The untold story of a colonial enigma

12/9/2021

A ROOM MADE OF LEAVES
by Kate Grenville

Kate Grenville has captured the imagined voice of enigmatic pastoralist Elizabeth Macarthur in a way that makes you rethink everything you may have learnt about colonial Sydney, in her new novel A Room Made of Leaves.

Published by Text Publishing, August 2021 | Historical Fiction, Australian, Women

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