A woman’s view: ‘Elizabeth Macarthur’ by Michelle Scott Tucker
If John Macarthur (1767-1834) is known as ‘Father of the Australian Wool Industry’, why is his wife Elizabeth (1766-1850) not known as its ‘Mother’? After all, she spent over a decade managing the family’s extensive farming concerns, while her husband was back in England dealing with both business and legal matters. During that time she dealt with convict workers, monitored the sheep breeding program the couple had instituted at Parramatta and Camden, plus kept the household affairs in order, including caring for their six children.
No small feat, you would think.
Yet until recent years, her husband’s story has been the one taught in schools and told in history books.So I read Michelle Scott Tucker’s biography of this remarkable woman with pleasure and interest. Elizabeth arrived in NSW at a time when the fledgling colony was foundering, on the brink of starvation and failure. She was from a genteel and educated background in Devon, and wrote letters home to friends and family, many of which have survived and give a fascinating insight – a woman’s view – of the beginnings of what became Australia.
This was rare, as were women in those early years of NSW. The colony was heavily male-dominated and those (white) women who were here, were mostly convicts; few wrote letters to give insight into poorer women’s experiences of NSW in those times. Of course, Elizabeth’s own preoccupations tended to center on her own experiences: her family, her faith, her home and beloved garden, the farming concerns, the small settler social circles in which she mixed.
Though she lived at the time and in places where violence between white settlers and Aboriginal people was erupting, she seemed not to spend a lot of time reflecting on the reasons and ramifications of the conflict; nor did she appear to examine the reasons why a penal colony was needed by Britain in the first place. In this, she was not unusual.
She suffered her share of tragedies and setbacks: the death of her firstborn, a baby daughter, on the voyage to Sydney; the loss of other children later; facing those long periods managing on her own so far from home and family; dramas and difficulties affecting her adult children; and especially, watching the decline of her husband’s mental health. His behaviour became more erratic and volatile as he descended into full-blown mania and paranoia, which must have been excrutiating for her to witness.
A point of great interest to me personally was that the Macarthurs began their voyage aboard the ship Neptune – the very same convict transport ship that not one, but two of my own ancestors arrived on. True to form, John fought so bitterly with the ship’s master that they were transferred to another of the Second Fleet ships for the bulk of the journey. I’m pretty sure that the Macarthurs would not have laid eyes on either of my ancestors, both of whom (against all odds) survived the voyage below-decks on the ‘hell-ship’, as the Neptune was later dubbed.
Still, it makes for a fascinating ‘what if?’ scenario: an encounter between the gentrifed couple and the ragged, suffering convict men.
Scott Tucker’s book paints a vivid picture of a full life lived with dignity and verve. It is also a fascinating account of the world the Macarthurs inhabited: a fragile but growing colony ‘at the edge of the world’, as the book’s subtitle suggests.
Elizabeth Macarthur: A Life at the Edge of the World was published in 2018 by Text Publishing Australia.
Excavating a childhood: ‘The Framing’ by Fernanda Dahlstrom
For the first couple of chapters of this memoir, I felt like I was in the centre of an archaeological dig, surrounded by bits of rock and shards of broken pottery, none of which fitted together. The narrative jumps forwards and backwards in time, it is peopled by characters I found hard to sort out with odd nicknames or pseudonyms. None of it made sense.
I almost gave up. But I persevered and I am very glad I did.
I realised that, deliberately or not, the author has told the story of her remarkable, fraught childhood in a way that reflects its chaotic, mixed up nature. Through her writing, she has excavated her early life and especially the relationship with her mother, bit by bit, memory by memory, rather like an archaeological dig. What she found was often a jumbled mess…reaching clarity in adulthood as she worked through the memories, slowly dealing with the legacy of those early years.
By any measure, her trajectory was startling. Her mother Margaret was charged with multiple offences to do with fraud, theft, burglary and even stalking (of Judith Durham of The Seekers), but steadfastly maintained her innocence, insisting that she had been framed by police with a vendetta against her.
So Fernanda spent much of her childhood on the run, moving between states, cities, towns.
Super-bright, she was reading philosophers and literary novels in primary school. She began university study in her mid-teens. She spent chunks of time in boarding houses, living with foster families, even looking after herself in an isolated rural house her mother had built. She organised her own travel by plane, taxis and trains to see her mother during her periods of incarceration.
All this, while believing her mother was innocent and a victim of ‘the system.’
What struck me as especially sad was the chasm that opened up with family members – including grandparents – who could have stepped in to provide a loving, more stable environment for a child.
Her narrative did two things for me. I felt enormous admiration for young Fernanda, for her fierce loyalty to her mother and her resourceful approach to the many challenging situations she found herself in. She certainly presents an argument against the somewhat over-protected bubbles that children tend to live in nowdays, at least in wealthy Western countries.
I also felt enormous sadness for the little girl growing up without the guardrails and stability that we might assume are the birthright of every child.
This excavation of a childhood makes for a gripping narrative that raises many deep questions about who we trust and why; about how the systems set up to protect the vulnerable can harm as well as help; and about how each of us must decide for ourselves the value of our own experience and the things we are told about our past.
The Framing was published in 2026 by Melbourne University Press.
My thanks to the author for a copy of the book to review.The human cost: ‘The Mushroom Tapes’ by Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper & Sarah Krasnostein
The subtitle of this book sums up the authors’ intent: Conversations on a Triple-Murder Trial.
It’s not a blow-by-blow of the whole trial, nor of the crime itself. That sort of true-crime writing is not really my cup of tea, nor is it the kind of approach that the three authors are, rightly, famous for.
Rather, it’s a collaborative exploration of their personal responses to what they see, hear and think during this very famous trial in Victoria’s Gippsland region in 2025.
Especially, it is an examination of the very significant toll on those involved: the human side of the headlines, the speculation, the theories. The crime is only the first part of a process that affects every individual who is somehow connected to a trial like this.
I probably would not have been inclined to read this book, except that the three women who wrote it are authors whose previous works I have admired. They tackle their subjects with respect, humility and a very honest vulnerability. These qualities are reflected in this, a collection of conversations they had together while driving and from to the small town where the trial was held, and in between hearing days.
The result is not a forensic examination of the evidence, or the legal arguments, so much as how all of this made them feel – about the accused, about the victims, about the residents of a little country town that will be forever changed. The legal teams, the journalists covering the trial. The families of the dead.
They debate long and hard about their reasons for wanting to attend and write about this particular trial. Are they, in the end, like those who see it as an opportunity to make a quick buck from a book, podcast or film? Are they just curious sticky-beaks wanting a vicarious glimpse into unimaginable trauma? They share their thoughts about those reasons; here is part of their answer:
Helen: Basically what we’re doing is bearing witness…We’re bearing witness to a rent in the social fabric and how the law is going to deal with it.
Sarah: You can do two things with [evidence in a trial]. You can digest it into content that people come to ogle out of shadenfreude, or you can say ‘Oh God, I know that feeling…I know what shame is, and I know what rage is,and I know what it is to be islolated and desperate.’
ebook pp 23-24 of 249Of course mushrooms feature throughout, death cap mushrooms being the medium by which the killer delivered the poison to her victims. The authors muse on the ways in which mushrooms could be seen as metaphors: for indications of personality, relationships, intent. This book also had me thinking about fungi in general and its place in our environment.
I love the way these women write, and I loved ‘hearing’ their voices throughout this book: unadorned, unedited, honest.
The Mushroom Tapes is unlike any ‘true-crime’ book I’ve come across previously. In their exploration of this particular trial and the crime that brought it about, the authors have much to say about us all.The Mushroom Tapes was published by Text Publishing in 2025
A kind of gothic: ‘The Diamonds of Tilly Devine’ by Jackie French
One thing I most appreciate about profilic and best-selling Australian author Jackie French is that she is unafraid to explore darker themes in her work. Her books will at times touch on issues and events that some authors might steer away from, especially in books for children.
Her latest historical fiction for adults delves into some very dark topics indeed: Sydney’s ‘razor gangs’ of the 1930s; the desperation of the poor in the city’s slums; drugs; prostitution and trafficking of young women; corruption of all kinds; sadistic personalities.
The protagonist of The Diamonds of Tilly Devine is Connie, who is reeling from the death of the mother she’d nursed for seven years. Now left with only an old kitchen chair to her name, she is considering suicide.
Happily it moves on from there and Connie’s life trajectory does move upwards, but not before some very dark and difficult, almost gothic, experiences which serve to strengthen this compassionate young woman to a diamond-grade toughness.
The Tilly Devine of the title was a real historical figure, one of two rival gangland queens in Sydney during the 1920s and 30s. Speaking of tough: it was well known in her world of sly-grog shops, brothels and gambling clubs, that Tilly would shoot anyone who crossed her – or who mistreated her ‘girls.’ Especially the Diamonds – not sex-workers as such, but women groomed for a particular role. One she offers to Connie.
Connie makes mistakes, some with disastrous consequences, but she survives, eventually finding the home and family she’d longed for, along with an understanding of the things that really matter in this world. There’s a murder mystery and a gripping courtroom drama along the way, things I always enjoy in a novel.
This novel is chock-full of wonderful characters, richly drawn settings, and delicious food of the era (excepting the crumbed brains and roast mutton, neither of which appealed to this vegetarian.) But the scones, cakes, puddings and biscuits read like they’ve just come from the author’s kitchen, which they may well have done!
While this one is perhaps a little too gothic for my taste, Jackie French’s skill as a story-teller had me up reading at night, reluctant to put the book down before I’d finished the next chapter, then the next…
The Diamonds of Tilly Devine is published by HarperCollins in June 2026.
My thanks to the publishers and to NetGalley for an advance review copy.Imposter sydnrome: ‘The Writers Retreat’ by Victoria Brownlee
I admit to being a little puzzled by this novel. Described by the publishers as a ‘twisty and atmospheric thriller’, I was well into the second half wondering when the tension would begin. It’s definitely atmospheric – one of the best things about the book is its setting (a beautiful old home in the south of France, where the owners offer writing workshops and retreats for published and aspiring authors.)
The story centers around Kat, an Australian author who has a best-selling romance novel under her belt, but is catastrophically stuck on her second manuscript, with a crippling case of imposter sydrome. Perhaps she really can’t write, after all? Perhaps the success of her first book was a fluke?
On a whim she books a last-minute spot for a two week retreat in France, hoping that this will kick start her creativity and prompt her writing.
What she gets is so much more, because she begins to suspect that Helen, the retreat leader, is hiding something, which may have to do with the success of Helen’s own first novel.
Kat begins to pry and snoop, while keeping a daily journal as required by the workshop facilitators. This is where I began to lose patience, as the journal seemed to me to be repetitive and a bit whingy. It reads as journals often do – introspective, self-doubting, constantly questioning her decisions and impulses. Yet she does act impulsively, often unwisely, eventually leading herself into danger.
So, I found the novel slow moving, repetitive at times, frustrating at others.
Aspects I enjoyed were (as mentioned) the setting and some of the characters, who were well drawn. And the food! Victoria Brownlee has been a food writer and previously published light romantic novels set in France and featuring food, and she does capture the allure of the French culture, countryside and food beautifully.
So yes, this novel puzzled me. I spent some time while reading it trying to work out if it was a light escapist novel or a more serious thriller, and in the end decided on the former.
The Writers Retreat is published by Affirm Press (an imprint of Simon & Schuster) in March 2026.
My thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for an advance copy to review.The beautiful & the broken: ‘The Chateau on Sunset’ by Natasha Lester
Epic Love. Tragic Loss. Beautiful Friendship. The entrancing story of an orphan who grows up surrounded by the beautiful and the broken in the world’s most infamous hotel.
Australian author Natasha Lester writes lush, epic novels, mostly in historical settings. I’ve enjoyed several of these, especially the ones featuring stories from WWII. Her novels are always focused on women from the past who face seemingly insurmountable obstacles, but who nevertheless triumph. The Paris Photographer is a good example of this, about the photographer Lee Miller whose wartime work in Europe was famous, for a while, but who faded into self-imposed obscurity after the war ended.
The Chateau on Sunset seems, at first glance, to be a different beast altogether. The first part of the book is set firmly in the USA in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and is about a teenage girl who is sent to live with her reclusive aunt when her parents are killed in an accident.
This takes her from her home in New York to Los Angeles – or more precisely, Hollywood. Her aunt is a ‘washed up’ star of the silver screen, and her new home is the Chateau Marmont, a famous (notorious?) hotel where the rich, famous and wanna-be stars gravitate around movie moguls and film icons.
Aria is young and naive and grieving terribly for her parents. She is helped to adjust to this very new environment by two aspiring actresses, Calliope and Flitter (their ‘stage names’, I was relieved to find out). The three become firm friends, sisters of a kind, despite the age difference between Aria and the other two.
But the world of Hollywood starlets and burned-out stars is not a safe place for a youngster and Aria has to quickly learn the rules of survival. She becomes a reluctant party to a secret that haunts her and makes her potential prey to at least one of the Hollywood sharks that swim in the murky waters of the hotel.
She realises that she must leave the hotel to find her own way in the world and live life on her own terms. How she eventually does so is the crux of this story.
The author references Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, a favourite childhood book, for the inspiration for this novel. In a way, it is a re-imagining of this classic story, but one in which Jane, not Rochester, is the character with agency and control over her destiny, despite her shaky start. There is a passionate romance with accompanying doubts and troubles, but by the end of the novel Aria is steering her own ship towards a future she has chosen.
The darker elements of this book concern the behaviours of characters we might think of as ‘Harvey Weinsteins.’ The author channels her rage at the predatory behaviour of that man and others like him, and the destructive Hollywood studio system, into a gripping novel that has us cheering for those who defy the unfairness of the place and time.
You get the future you give in to, or the one you fight for.
It’s time for me to be the star of my own goddamn life.
The Chateau on Sunset ebook loc 86%Hollywood’s famous Chateau Marmont is brought to life in the characteristic style of this author, with attention to the details, large and small, that made up this iconic building and those who lived there, in the mid-twentieth century.
The Chateau on Sunset is published by Hachette Australia in March 2026.
My thanks to the publishers and to NetGalley for an advanced review copy.
Love and Survival: ‘A Great Act of Love’ by Heather Rose
Heather Rose is an award-winning Tasmanian author with a range of published works across an astonishing array of genres: contemporary environmental thriller (Bruny), character-driven literary work set in a major art museum (The Museum of Modern Love), memoir (Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here), to name just three of her earlier books.
A Great Act of Love extends that range into historical fiction, as she tackles a story inspired by her own family history, returning again to the island that is her home.
Caroline Douglas comes to Tasmania (then known as Van Diemens Land) in 1839 in the guise of a young, wealthy widow with a young boy in her care as ward. She has left England after great tragedies, in which her entire world had been lost to her. She settles beside an abandoned vineyard on the outskirts of Hobart Town and tries to make sense of this upside-down world of convicts, their guards and administrators, other exiles like herself, and those who operate between the lines of order and chaos.
She has her own secrets, which are gradually revealed as the novel progresses. Secrets about her own family and about herself and her real reasons for choosing a tiny isolated speck on the map as her new home. Secrets about the reason she tries to revive the neglected vineyard on her property and dreams of establishing a champagne product to rival that of France.
Caroline quickly realises that almost everyone she meets has their own secrets and desires and she must navigate her way between truth and lies in order to survive and to progress her own goals. There are dark deeds afoot, here in this place of exile and enslavement and genocide.
Seeing white men enslaved brought Cornelius no balm. Cruelty was a boundless cycle of suffering that deserved no allegiance.
A Great Act of Love, ebook version p192 of 433There are different stories told from various perspectives: Caroline’s own, her father, her aunt, a Commandant of another penal settlement at Norfolk Island, an escaped slave from the Americas, and others. Readers get insights into what is driving Caroline and others, through these carefully meted out nuggets of information. We test and re-test theories as the novel progresses; this keeps us engaged and committed to uncovering the truth.
The setting is beautifully conveyed: an island colonised by a people who think little of killing, imprisoning, punishing other humans. But also a place of great, wild beauty.
The theme of love underlies the entire novel, but also of strength and survival and vision:
As he watches her walk back across the field in her new boots of kangaroo skin he wonders if she is yet accustomed to the sensation of the world having flung her adrift. Mostly what he’d seen of people was a yearning to take away the dread of uncertainty. To be content in the smallness. But some people seem to harbour greater thoughts. Mrs Douglas, he thinks, is doing all she can to manage this unfamiliar life and to make something of it.
A Great Act of Love, ebook version p197 of 433A Great Act of Love was published by Allen & Unwin in September 2025.
The story of a story: ‘Always Home, Always Homesick’ by Hannah Kent
Are you fascinated by how stories are created? Where does a writer, filmmaker, or songwriter get that first spark, the idea that grabs them and insists tell this story.
It’s something I have always been interested in. I love learning about how a movie goes from storyboard to opening night, or how a lick of a guitar riff becomes a hit song.
I pored over Kate Grenville’s In Search of the Secret River in which she details the research and other preparation that went into the writing of her best-selling historical novel The Secret River. Likewise her more recent Unsettled, a memoir of coming to terms with uncomfortable truths in our personal, family and national history, also relevant to that ground-breaking earlier work.
So I was delighted to pick up a copy of Hannah Kent’s latest work, Always Home, Always Homesick.
In a way, it’s the story of how she wrote her best-known story to date, Burial Rites, first published in 2013. This historical novel was based on the tragic real-life character of Agnes Magnusdottir who was tried for her role in the brutal murder of two men on a remote farm in Iceland in the 1800s. Agnes was found guilty and was the last woman to be executed in Iceland.
Hannah learned of Agnes and her fate while she was a young student in Iceland on a year’s Rotary Exchange program. If the novel’s subject matter had not already interested me, the circumstances of its beginnings certainly did, because decades before Hannah set off on her exchange adventure, I had done likewise – to the USA, not Iceland – but like Hannah, leaving family and home behind for a year to live with several different families in the town to which I was sent.
I was intrigued that this young woman was so captivated by a story from her host country that after her return to Australia, Agnes’s fate stayed in her mind. Hannah returned to Iceland several times, including to conduct research in Icelandic archives and museums but also in the places Agnes lived, worked and eventually died. All of these experiences went into the book that quickly became a global best-seller and launched the author’s literary career.
Always Home, Always Homesick is, at its core, a ‘love letter’ to the country that changed her life. She writes about the moment she decided to apply for the Rotary exchange program and why, that This is the thing that will lead me further into life, that will allow me to breathe lung-deep of it. (ebook p54)
Then the excitement and trepidation of preparing for her year away, trying to learn about Iceland and its language at a time when there was not the ready access to such information as we now have. Donning the rather ghastly Rotary exchange student uniform (the green blazer with its Australiana pins obviously not changed much since my time in the late 1970s…) and hoping that the Rotary contact meeting her at the airport is on time and will recognise her as the exchange student. Getting on that plane takes courage and hope.
I remember all those feelings!
Then the confusion of arriving in a foreign land where customs and behaviours can be so different. And for Hannah, trying to quickly pick up an entirely new language from scratch. Starting school almost immediately on arrival – a daunting proposition. Loneliness and feeling isolated to start with, until breaking through with a warm, friendly family who welcome her as one of their own. Again, there were some echoes of my own time on exchange here.
She experiences the full gamut of Iceland’s seasonal changes and its stark, dramatic beauty, and begins to channel her feelings about it into writing:
I am falling in love with Iceland, and I need to articulate the hold it has over me. My writing, once a balm for solitude and lonliness, takes on a euphoric urgency. Writing now feels like prayer.
Always Home, Always Homesick ebook p192
When her exchange year is over and she returns to Australia, she studies creative writing and works seriously on her craft. But Agnes’s story is always in her mind so it is inevitable that when she returns to the embrace of her new-found family and friends, the research becomes another focus for her time there.
This was also of great interest to me: having trailed around historic sites in Australia and England in search of places of significance in stories I wanted to tell, I loved reading about this aspect of her writing. The hours spent in Icelandic archives, painstakingly examining census documents for a glimpse of Agnes or her family. Translating old documents into English. Taking hundreds of photos in museums. Reading, listening and watching archival and modern-day accounts of Agnes’s life, crime, trial and execution.
All the things that go into the story of a story.
Always Home, Always Homesick was published by Picador in 2025.
Weasel words of past & present: ‘Unsettled’ by Kate Grenville
I had been waiting for this book, from the moment I first heard about it.
Kate Grenville’s earlier work, The Secret River (published 2005) has become something of an Australian classic. It’s fictionalised account of her ancestor Solomon Wiseman’s life as a convict, then a wealthy settler on the Hawkesbury River sparked discussion of the realities of the interface between white and black histories of this country.
Since then she has written several other works of historical fiction, and some non-fiction, inspired by or about the lives of her ancestors and their times.
Now she has turned her sharp analysis to the question of ‘What does it mean to be on land that was taken from other people? Now that we know how the taking was done, what do we do with that knowledge?’
Subtitled ‘A journey through time and place’, Unsettled is her account of a pilgrimage of sorts, in which she travels through the places of significance in her family stories, passed on to her by her mother. She is searching for the hidden side of those stories, the people deliberately or carelessly written out of history: the First Peoples with whom her ancestors would have interacted.
In my research and writing about my own family history I have struggled with these questions and the silences of the past. What part did my ancestors play in the dispossession of the First Nations of this land? Were they perpetrators of any of the many acts of violence towards Aboriginal people that took place in colonial and later times? How would I feel if I discovered evidence of this? What would I do with that knowledge?
Like Ms Grenville, I came to the conclusion that all of my ancestors were, in some capacity, complicit in the long act of dispossession since 1788. Many (like the convicts sent here on the transport ships from England and Ireland) unwillingly so. Others (like Grenville, I have ancestors who ‘took up’ land as squatters, benefiting enormously from what was essentially a free-for-all land grab in the early years of white settlement) did so very willingly indeed. Later generations lived (as I do today) in country that was stolen, unceded land.
It is a difficult truth to stare in the face and one that, for generations, white Australians preferred not to see.
Hence the weasel words used to describe the acts of stealing land and the people who stole it (taking up land, opening it up, squatting, land grants, settlers, pioneers, explorers) and ones that were used about the people from whom the land was stolen (blacks, savages, nomads, going walkabout, as examples.) The latter demonstrated a supreme lack of understanding of the subtle and sophisticated worldview and culture of the First Peoples, while the former justified the wholesale robbery of the land and all it contained by the invading colonists.
This book is all about seeing things differently:
Now that I think about it. That’s the thing – I’m thinking about things differently now, rather than sliding along on the well-lubricated surface of unremarkable words. Thinking in a way that allows a whole other story to be glimpsed. No, not even a story, just a suggestion of a suspicion, embedded so far below the surface it’s easy to pooh-pooh it as ridiculous.
Unsettled p35This is a very personal journey and a very personal story. But Grenville’s skill as a storyteller weaves a tale that is both individual and general to all Australians. While imparting her unique responses to the places she visits, the experiences she has on her travels and what she finds in her research, the questions she poses are for us all to consider.
Her comments about the popularity of family history resonate with me, and I think are meaningful on a bigger scale as well:
we…need to be asking questions about our forebears. Not to reassure ourselves, and not to make any claims for ourselves, but to learn how we really fit – and the ways we don’t fit – into the story of being here.
Unsettled p206I could not agree more.
Here is Kate Grenville discussing the impulse that set her on the journey of exploration that resulted in Unsettled.
Unsettled was published by Black Inc Books in 2025
A nod to the gothic: ‘The Midnight Estate’ by Kelly Rimmer
I’m a bit of a sucker for ‘book within a book’ stories. Done well, they can have you intruiged from the moment you realise there is a connection between the two seemingly unrelated narratives. Think Magpie Murders which added a delightful dual-timeline component as well as two murder mysteries to solve.
Australian author Kelly Rimmer writes excellent historical fiction, often weaving together legacies from the Second World War with modern-day protagonists in very moving ways. The Midnight Estate is a little different, although here, too, past events cast long shadows over the present.
Fiona Winslow moves back to country NSW after an emotionally exhausting year, planning on restoring the crumbling mansion that belonged to her beloved uncle and was once home to herself, her mother and her cousin. Since her uncle’s death it has stood empty and neglected and she is faced with a mammoth task, not helped by inexplicable opposition by her mother towards her plans – and rumours in the town that the house is haunted.
While cleaning and sorting her uncle’s old furniture and belongings, she comes across a box of books, sent by the publishers to her uncle, who had been a famous award-winning writer. As she begins to read The Midnight Estate, Fiona is puzzled, then intruiged by apparent similarities between her family’s story and the novel’s. Her uncle’s name is not on the book, but who wrote it? And why do some of the characters resemble people she knows?
The old mansion house, while a beautiful haven for Fiona as a child, begins to feel less welcoming, as she begins to piece together parts of a family story that go back a generation. There are dark secrets that must be uncovered before Fiona can reconcile what she thought she knew about herself and her family with what she learns, and finally feel that she has come home at last.
There are enough creaks in the night for The Midnight Estate to feel like an old-fashioned gothic mystery. However, the novel’s theme deals with an enduring and contemporary issue, that of coercive control and intimate partner violence; skillfully done and very believable.
The Midnight Estate is published by Hachette in July 2025.
My thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for a review copy.
