A young woman’s struggle to save her family and her soul during the most extraordinary year of 1666, when plague suddenly visited a small Derbyshire village and the villagers, inspired by a charismatic preacher, elected to quarantine themselves to limit the contagion.
In 1666, plague scorched London, driving the King and his court to Oxford, and Samuel Pepys to Greenwich, to escape contagion. The north of England remained untouched until, in a small community of leadminers and hill farmers, a bolt of cloth arrived from the capital. The tailor who cut the cloth had no way of knowing that the damp fabric carried with it bubonic infection.
So begins the Year of Wonders, in which a Pennine village of 350 souls confronts a scourge beyond remedy or understanding. Desperate, the villagers turn to sorcery, herb lore, and murderous witch-hunting. Then, led by a young and charismatic preacher, they elect to isolate themselves in a fatal quarantine. The story is told through the eyes of Anna Frith who, at only 18, must contend with the death of her family, the disintegration of her society, and the lure of a dangerous and illicit attraction.
Geraldine Brooks’s novel explores love and learning, fear and fanaticism, and the struggle of 17th century science and religion to deal with a seemingly diabolical pestilence. Year of Wonders is also an eloquent memorial to the real-life Derbyshire villagers who chose to suffer alone during England’s last great plague.
Shortlisted for the Westfield/Waverley Library Award for Literature 2002 and the International Impac Dublin Award
Geraldine Brooks is the author of two acclaimed works of non-fiction, Nine Parts of Desire and Foreign Correspondence. She is also a former war correspondent whose writing has appeared in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and the Guardian. Year of Wonders is her first novel.
Publisher: Fourth Estate A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers
Opening in a small village on the Chinese-Russian border under Japanese occupation in the final days of World War Two, White Gardenia tells the story of a White Russian mother and daughter whose lives are intersected by history.
From the glamorous nightclubs of Shanghai to the harshness of the Siberian wasteland, from a desolate island in the South China Sea to a new life in postwar Australia, and finally to Cold War Moscow, White Gardenia sweeps across cultures and continents.
Roy Kyle was a typical Australian soldier, gripped by patriotism to defend King and country during the First World War. It was the war to end all wars.
Enlisting early and underage, Roy celebrated his eighteenth birthday in the trenches of Lone Pine, Gallipoli where over two and a half thousand Australians were killed or wounded. He was one of the last to be evacuated.
This is a story of extended family, the treatment of Aboriginals, and history lost and found. Nan, the author's grandmother, wants to "forget" about her heritage. She teaches her grandchildren about birds and bullfrogs to make sure they know nature's side of life and instils in them a certain distrust of white people, but she won't talk about her past.
Hugh Lunn is on a mission to bring rich colour back to the Australian language. By exploring the phrases of his early years, Lunn doesn’t simply bring back hundreds of funny, apt, poignant and cutting sayings, he evokes a lost world of Australia; one that anyone, whatever their age, will enjoy.
