Bloomsbury Girls – Natalie Jenner
One bookshop. Fifty-one rules. Three women who break them all.
1950. Bloomsbury Books on London’s Lamb’s Conduit Street has resisted change for 100 years, run by men and guided by the manager’s unbreakable rules. But after the turmoil of war in Europe, the world is changing, and the women in the shop have plans.
The brilliant and stylish Vivien Lowry, still grieving her fiancé who was killed in action, has a long list of grievances, the biggest of which is Alec McDonough, the head of fiction.
Loyal Grace Perkins is torn between duty and dreams of her own while struggling to support her family following her husband’s breakdown.
Fiercely bright Evie Stone was one of the first female Cambridge students to earn a degree but was denied an academic position in favour of a less accomplished male rival. Now she plans to remake her own future.
As these Bloomsbury girls interact with literary figures of the time among them Daphne du Maurier, Samuel Beckett, Peggy Guggenheim, Vivien, Grace and Evie plot out a richer and more rewarding future.
The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem – Sarit Yishai-Levi
Gabriela’s mother Luna is the most beautiful woman in all of Jerusalem, though her famed beauty and charm seem to be reserved for everyone but her daughter. Ever since Gabriela can remember, she and Luna have struggled to connect. But when tragedy strikes, Gabriela senses there’s more to her mother than painted nails and lips.
Desperate to understand their relationship, Gabriela pieces together the stories of her family’s previous generations – from Great-Grandmother Mercada the renowned healer, to Grandma Rosa who cleaned houses for the English, to Luna who had the nicest legs in Jerusalem. But Gabriela must face a past and present far more complex than she ever imagined.
Spanning decades, The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem follows generations of unforgettable women as they forge their own paths through times of dramatic change, and paints a dazzling portrait of a family and a young nation as they struggle to find their way even as others try to carve it out for them.
The Half Life of Valery K – Natasha Pulley
The truth must come out.
In 1963, in a Siberian gulag, former nuclear specialist Valery Kolkhanov has mastered what it takes to survive: the right connections to the guards for access to food and cigarettes, the right pair of warm boots to avoid frostbite, and the right attitude toward the small pleasures of life. But on one ordinary day, all that changes: Valery’s university mentor steps in and sweeps Valery from the frozen prison camp to a mysterious unnamed town hidden within a forest so damaged it looks like the trees have rusted from within.
Here, Valery is Dr. Kolkhanov once more, and he’s expected to serve out his prison term studying the effect of radiation on local animals. But as Valery begins his work, he is struck by the questions his research raises: what, exactly, is being hidden from the thousands who live in the town? And if he keeps looking for answers, will he live to serve out his sentence?
Based on real events in a surreal Soviet city, and told with bestselling author Natasha Pulley’s inimitable style, The ‘Half Life of Valery K’ is a sweeping historical adventure.
Woman on Fire – Lisa Barr
After talking her way into a job, rising young journalist Jules Roth is given an unusual assignment: locate a painting stolen by the Nazis more than 75 years earlier. The painting? None other than legendary artist Ernst Engel’s most famous work, Woman on Fire.
Conviction – Frank Chalmers
Queensland in 1976 churns with corruption. When Detective Ray Windsor defies it, he is exiled deep into the state’s west. It’s easy out there to feel alien in your own country.
Royalton is a town on its knees, stricken by drought, riven by prejudice, and plagued by crimes left largely uninvestigated by the local police chief, Kennedy, and his elusive boss.
Mutual dislike between Kennedy and Ray gradually turns ugly as Ray and his new partner, Arshag, uncover a pattern of crimes that no one seems concerned about solving. But when two girls from local immigrant families are found dead and another disappears, Ray and Arshag are forced to take the law into their own hands. Not knowing who to trust, nor how deep the corruption runs, how long will it be before their lives are also threatened?
A spare and uncompromising crime thriller that pulls no punches.
The Secret World of Connie Starr – Robbi Neal
Connie Starr was always a difficult child. Her mother knew as soon as Connie entered the world that day in Ballarat in 1934 and opened her lungs to scream, there was more chaos in the world than before and it wouldn’t leave until Connie did. From the safety of a branch high in her lemon tree where she speaks to angels, she sees the world for what it is – a swirling mass of beauty and darkness, of trauma and family, of love and war and truth and lies – lies that might just undo her and drive her to a desperate act.
This ambitious, complex and insightful novel intertwines numerous stories of lives from before World War II and beyond, recreating with intimacy and breadth a world that is now lost to us. This book is a brightly coloured patchwork quilt of everything from shoes to polio, lemon trees to rivers, death to life that melds into one beautiful, luminous work of art.
