A Room Made Of Leaves

Kate Grenville Canongate Books

*NEW NOVEL RESTLESS DOLLY MAUNDER SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2024* FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE-SHORTLISTED AND WOMEN’S PRIZE-WINNING AUSTRALIAN NOVELIST SHORTLISTED FOR THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL FICTION It is 1788. When twenty-one-year-old Elizabeth marries the arrogant and hot-headed soldier John Macarthur, she soon realises she has made a terrible mistake. Forced to travel with him to New South Wales, she arrives to find Sydney Town a brutal, dusty, hungry place of makeshift shelters, failing crops, scheming and rumours. All her life she has learned to fold herself up small. Now, in the vast landscapes of an unknown continent, Elizabeth has to discover a strength she never imagined, and passions she could never express. Inspired by the real life of a remarkable woman, this is an extraordinarily rich, beautifully wrought novel of resilience, courage and the mystery of human desire.

ISBN10 : 9781838851255 , ISBN13 : 1838851259

Page Number : 334

The Idea Of Perfection

Kate Grenville Pan Macmillan

Grenville makes awkward atmospheres and fumbling encounters wonderfully vivid. Read it and cringe' The Times The Idea of Perfection is a funny and touching romance between two people who've given up on love. Set in the eccentric little backwater of Karakarook, New South Wales, pop. 1374, it tells the story of Douglas Cheeseman, a gawky engineer with jug-handle ears, and Harley Savage, a woman altogether too big and too abrupt for comfort. Harley is in Karakarook to foster 'Heritage', and Douglas is there to pull down the quaint old Bent Bridge. From day one, they're on a collison course. But out of this unpromising conjunction of opposites, something unexpected happens: sometimes even better than perfection. 'From these two reticent characters, besieged by two lifetimes of regret, doubt and dismay, Grenville manufactures an extraordinary comedy of manners, made all more powerful by her own reticence as a writer' Guardian 'Outrageously entertaining' Daily Mail 'Mined throughout with little pockets of danger and depth' Guardian 'A truly amazing writer' Rosie Boycott, chair of the Orange Prize jury

ISBN10 : 9780330523097 , ISBN13 : 0330523090

Page Number : 420

Elizabeth Macarthur

Michelle Scott Tucker Text Publishing

• A stunning achievement of storytelling and scholarship, Elizabeth Macarthur: A Life at the Edge of the World is a groundbreaking portrait of an ordinary English country woman who would go on to become of Australia’s most significant but little known historical figures • John Macarthur is widely credited as the father of the Australian wool industry but traditional histories have only ever cast his wife, Elizabeth, in a cameo role, undermining her importance and influence in the success of her family’s vast agricultural empire • Never simply a farmer’s wife but a farmer and business manager in her own right, Elizabeth supervised the Macarthur’s growing holdings, acted as an employer to a team of staff and maintained a steady social presence in the colony, all the while raising nine children and managing her husband’s increasing bouts of mania and depression • As a woman of great energy and practical intelligence, Elizabeth’s life redefines our traditional ideas of the colonial woman as an active participant who was engaged in many of the important historic, commercial and political activities of her era • Through Elizabeth’s story, Michelle Scott Tucker also paints a broader picture of the lives of Australian women at that time and offers insights into the early interactions with indigenous Australians • Elizabeth Macarthur: A Life at the Edge of the World is a highly readable, thoroughly researched and compelling work of biographical writing • A powerful addition to the growing canon of female-focused Australian history, from Anne Summers’ Damned Whores and God’s Police to Clare Wright’s The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka

ISBN10 : 1925603423 , ISBN13 : 9781925603422

Page Number : 384

One Life

Kate Grenville Canongate Books

*NEW NOVEL RESTLESS DOLLY MAUNDER SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2024* FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE-SHORTLISTED AND WOMEN’S PRIZE-WINNING AUSTRALIAN NOVELIST Kate Grenville often takes inspiration for her fiction from her family history and this extraordinary memoir about the life of her own mother, Nance Russell, reveals why. Born to an unhappy marriage and into a deeply sexist society, Nance worked hard for everything she had, and while the world changed around her, she went on to university, opening businesses and raising a family. One Life is just as much a universal story as it is Nance’s. Beautifully captured by her daughter, it draws on the tales passed down by word of mouth, creating an evocative portrait of life in twentieth-century rural Australia and a deeply intimate and caring homage to a mother’s struggle.

ISBN10 : 9781782116868 , ISBN13 : 1782116869

Page Number : 250

Dark Places

Kate Grenville ReadHowYouWant.com

'Winner of the Vance Palmer Award for Fiction, Victorian Premier's Literary Prize, 1995. Albion Gidley Singer creates his world as a vast collection of facts, facts he uses to support his own power and status. After an awkward childhood, aware that he is a disappointment to his father, he acquires, the trappings of respectability success in busi...

ISBN10 : 9781459620056 , ISBN13 : 1459620054

Page Number : 434

Sarah Thornhill

Kate Grenville Open Road + Grove/Atlantic

The Orange Prize–Winning author of The Secret River delivers “brilliant fiction and illuminating personal history” in the finale of her Australian trilogy (The Independent). With The Secret River, Kate Grenville dug into her own family’s history to create an unflinching tale of frontier violence in early Australia. She continued her bold exploration of Australia’s beginnings in The Lieutenant. Now Sarah Thornhill brings this acclaimed trilogy to an emotionally explosive conclusion. Sarah is the youngest daughter of William Thornhill, an ex-convict from London. Unknown to Sarah, her father has built his fortune on the blood of Aboriginal people. With a fine stone house and plenty of money, Thornhill has reinvented himself, teaching his daughter to never look back or ask about the past. Instead, Sarah fixes her eyes on handsome Jack Langland, whom she’s loved since she was a child. Their romance seems idyllic, but the ugly secret in Sarah’s family is poised to ambush them both. Driven by the captivating voice of the illiterate Sarah—at once headstrong, sympathetic, curious, and refreshingly honest—this is an unforgettable portrait of a passionate woman caught up in a historical moment that’s left an indelible mark on the present.

ISBN10 : 9780802194459 , ISBN13 : 0802194451

Page Number : 200

The Lieutenant

Kate Grenville Open Road + Grove/Atlantic

A young astronomer in colonial Australia faces tragedy on the ground in this follow-up to the award-winning The Secret River—“A triumph. Read it at once” (The Sunday Times, UK). A stunning follow-up to her Commonwealth Writers’ Prize-winning book, The Secret River, Grenville’s The Lieutenant is a gripping story of friendship, self-discovery, and the power of language set along the unspoiled shores of 1788 New South Wales, Australia. As a boy, Daniel Rooke was an outsider. Ridiculed in school for his intellect and misunderstood by his parents, he finds a path for himself in the British Navy—and in his love for astronomy. As a young lieutenant, Daniel joins a voyage to Australia. And while his countrymen struggle to control their cargo of convicts and communicate with nearby Aboriginal tribes, Daniel constructs an observatory to chart the stars and begin the work he prays will make him famous. Out on his isolated point, Daniel becomes involved with the local Aborigines, forging an intimate connection with one girl that will change the course of his life. But when his compatriots come into conflict with the indigenous population, Daniel must turn away from the stars and declare his loyalties on the ground.

ISBN10 : 9780802197689 , ISBN13 : 080219768X

Page Number : 320