In 1830s Sydney, a visiting aristocrat, Viscount Lascelles, is exposed as a former convict. In Cape Town, during the same decade, veiled accusations of incest and murmurs about a concealed pregnancy surround the family of the Chief Justice, Sir John Wylde. In these British colonies, the divide between the respectable and the disreputable is not as vast as might first appear. Rumour and hearsay muddy the lines between public and private worlds, and ensure that secret transgressions do not remain secret for very long. Scandal in the Colonies explores how colonial societies offered European settlers the opportunity to invent new identities, an opportunity exploited with a vengeance. But as people, goods and correspondence crossed the imperial realm, scandal was never far behind. In this lively and richly researched book Kirsten McKenzie uncovers the hidden stories of two port towns that were rife with gossip and dubious reputations. She argues that scandal influenced imperial policy and became a key element in the emergence of societies divided by class and race. Touching on themes such as masculinity and commercial culture, female sexuality in civil litigation and gossip in political culture, McKenzie offers a fresh and engaging approach to colonial history.
Under the Hippocratic Oath, a doctor swears to remember that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug. Doctor Perry assures his elderly patients at the Rose Haven Retirement Home that he can offer warmth, sympathy, and understanding. Doctor Perry is a liar. Hiding from a traumatic past, Elijah Cone wants nothing to do with the other residents at the Rose Haven, content to sit at his window waiting to die. He's about to learn that under Doctor Perry death is the easy option"--Back cover.
Emilio and Rosa are childhood sweethearts, engaged to be married. But it is 1942 and the war has taken Emilio far from Italy, to a tiny Orkney island where he is a POW. Rosa must wait for him to return and help her mother run the family hotel on the shores of Lake Como, in Italy. Feeling increasingly frustrated with his situation, Emilio is inspired by the idea of building a chapel on the barren island. The prisoners band together to create an extraordinary building out of little more than salvaged odds and ends and homemade paints. Whilst Emilio's chapel will remain long after the POW camp has been left to the sheep, will his love for Rosa survive the hardships of war and separation? For Rosa is no longer the girl that he left behind. She is being drawn further into the Italian resistance movement and closer to danger, as friendships and allegiances are ever complicated by the war. Human perseverance and resilience are at the heart of this strong debut and the small Italian chapel remains, as it does in reality on the island of Lamb's Holm, as a symbol of these qualities.
1762. Mary is desperate to escape her embittered mother. So when her marriage to a prosperous sea captain is arranged, she embraces the damp salt air, cramped conditions and bad food. She sets sail on the Isabella, away from the land of her childhood towards unseen places and an unknown future. But being the captain's wife is going to be harder than she thought. Her husband is still grieving for his first wife, and Mary can't ignore her feelings towards another man onboard. Through him, she has a taste of the kind of love she might have known, and even begins to think that escape is possible. With ruthless pirates patrolling British waters and ports full of outcasts with unspoken pasts, Mary learns quickly that loyalties are always shifting and people are rarely as they first seem. The Captain's Wife is a richly realised story of adventure about a strong young woman determined to survive her fate by a wonderful storyteller.
After disappearing amidst a spray of bullets, antiques dealer Sarah Lester leaves behind no body, only questions. From the remote shores of New Zealand, through India's hill country stations and onto the streets of Victorian London, Sarah must decide whether family bonds are strong enough to stretch through time.
FIVE STRANGERS IN FLORENCE, EACH WITH A DANGEROUS SECRET. AND AN APOCALYPTIC FLOOD THREATENING TO REVEAL EVERYTHING. A wife on the run, a student searching for stolen art, a cleaner who has lined more than his pockets, a policeman whose career is almost over, and a guest who should never have received a wedding invite. Five strangers, entangled in the forger's wicked web. In a race against time, and desperate to save themselves and all they hold dear, will their secrets prove more treacherous than the ominous floodwaters swallowing the historic city? Dive into a world of lies and deceit, where nothing is as it seems on the surface... Set in Florence, Italy, in 1966, the story takes place over three days, amidst the worst flooding in Florence's history.
FIVE STRANGERS IN FLORENCE, EACH WITH A DANGEROUS SECRET. AND AN APOCALYPTIC FLOOD THREATENING TO REVEAL EVERYTHING. A wife on the run, a student searching for stolen art, a cleaner who has lined more than his pockets, a policeman whose career is almost over, and a guest who should never have received a wedding invite. Five strangers, entangled in the forger’s wicked web. In a race against time, and desperate to save themselves and all they hold dear, will their secrets prove more treacherous than the ominous floodwaters swallowing the historic city? Dive into a world of lies and deceit, where nothing is as it seems on the surface… ★★★★★
The Antiques Roadshow, if Stephen King was the host... When art appraiser Anita Cassatt is sent to catalogue the extensive collection of reclusive artist Leo Kubin, it isn't the chill of the secluded house making her shiver, it's the silent audience of portraits clustered on every wall, watching her. The lawyer didn't share the dead artist's instructions for handling his art, and Anita and her team start work ignorant of the instructions designed to keep them safe. Safe from the art. There are secrets hiding in Kubin's house, and as Anita and her team discover, secrets don't want to stay hidden. Described as Caravaggio meets Poltergeist - Painted is a gothic horror novel with a decent serving of psychological unease and a healthy fear of the dark. Perfect for lovers of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House.
History shapes those who travel through it Following the unexplained disappearance of her parents, and in a last ditch attempt to save the antique store she has inherited from financial ruin, Sarah Lester takes on a deceased estate. Amongst the estate is a collection of vintage postcards which lead Sarah on a journey through time. Sarah is unprepared for what these postcards hint at about their reclusive former owner, and soon they complicate her life in unimaginable ways, transporting her to Victorian London, colonial New Zealand and to the British Raj in India. Sarah has to fight her twenty-first century instincts, and a century of emancipation, to survive. Traversing three continents and two centuries, where tiger hunts and ruby necklaces are irrevocably entwined with murders and mysteries, auction houses and antiquities, Sarah is drawn into the enigma that could solve her parents' disappearance, and the question of should she stay or should she go, gets harder and harder to answer, the deeper she delves into the past. Perfect for fans of the Outlander series and lovers of The Time Travelers Wife. What people are saying about Fifteen Postcards: "If history lessons had been this entertaining, I would have scored an A+!." -Andrene Low, author of the Excess Baggage series "This story is one for devotees of adventurous historical fiction and tales of plucky young women finding their feet." -Stephanie Jones, CoastFM Book Reviewer "I think the author has done a commendable job in bringing the story to life and it's obvious that she has used extensive historical research to ensure that the story always feels authentic and that's not an easy feat to pull off." -JaffaReadsToo, Book Blogger "Kirsten McKenzie has written a very unusual novel: part time travel, part historical, and part antique review. Sarah?s adventures in other times and other continents, linked together by the postcards and the antiques, are well researched and entertainingly written." -Historical Novel Society What reviewers are saying about Kirsten McKenzie: "McKenzie has done a spectacular job of combining well-researched history with a hint of mysterious intrigue." -Anxious Canadian Blog "Kirsten Mckenzie has written an excellent foray into historical fiction. I'm honestly not quite sure how she was able to keep up with and integrate the different settings, time periods, and characters without losing her place. But she managed it magnificently." -Author Sean Whittaker "McKenzie?s descriptions of the shop are well drawn and wonderfully evoke the jumbled chaos of layers of leftovers from centuries of everyday life." -NZBookLovers blog
In May 1835 in a Sydney courtroom, a slight, balding man named John Dow stood charged with forgery. The prisoner shocked the room by claiming he was Edward, Viscount Lascelles, eldest son of the powerful Earl of Harewood. The Crown alleged he was a confidence trickster and serial impostor. Was this really the heir to one of Britain's most spectacular fortunes? Part Regency mystery, part imperial history, A Swindler's Progress is an engrossing tale of adventure and deceit across two worlds—British aristocrats and Australian felons—bound together in an emerging age of opportunity and individualism, where personal worth was battling power based on birth alone. The first historian to unravel the mystery of John Dow and Edward Lascelles, Kirsten McKenzie illuminates the darker side of this age of liberty, when freedom could mean the freedom to lie both in the far-flung outposts of empire and within the established bastions of British power. The struggles of the Lascelles family for social and political power, and the tragedy of their disgraced heir, demonstrate that British elites were as fragile as their colonial counterparts. In ways both personal and profound, McKenzie recreates a world in which Britain and the empire were intertwined in the transformation of status and politics in the nineteenth century.
After disappearing amidst a spray of bullets, Sarah Lester leaves behind no body, only questions. From the remote shores of New Zealand, through India's hill country and onto the streets of Victorian London, Sarah must decide whether family bonds are strong enough to stretch through time.
Described as Caravaggio meets Poltergeist - Painted is a gothic ghost novel with a decent serving of psychological unease and a healthy fear of the dark. Perfect for lovers of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House. Think, the Antiques Roadshow, if Stephen King was the host...
A wife on the run, a student searching for stolen art, a cleaner who has lined more than his pockets, a policeman whose career is almost over, and a guest who should never have received a wedding invite. Five strangers, entangled in the forger's wicked web.
Determined to save the antiques store she has inherited from ruin after the unexplained disappearance of her parents, Sarah Lester discovers a jumbled collection of vintage postcards which lead her on a journey through time.
Sarah Lester's mother is missing and the Indian uprising holds her father captive. The police want to question her, and even the church is demanding its pound of flesh. Her return to The Old Curiosity Shop raises more questions than answers. Can Sarah reunite her scattered family before Grey closes the doorway to the past?
Rose Haven Retirement Home's resident doctor, Doctor Perry, has a secret. The charismatic doctor loves his elderly patients, because nobody asks any questions when the old and lonely disappear... Forced into action, the retirees soon learn that under Doctor Perry's care, death is the easy option...
Emilio and Rosa are childhood sweethearts, engaged to be married. But it is 1942 and the war has taken Emilio far from Italy, to a tiny Orkney island where he is a POW. Rosa must wait for him to return and help her mother run the family hotel on the shores of Lake Como, in Italy. Feeling increasingly frustrated with his situation, Emilio is inspired by the idea of building a chapel on the barren island. The prisoners band together to create an extraordinary building out of little more than salvaged odds and ends and homemade paints. Whilst Emilio's chapel will remain long after the POW camp has been left to the sheep, will his love for Rosa survive the hardships of war and separation? For Rosa is no longer the girl that he left behind. She is being drawn further into the Italian resistance movement and closer to danger, as friendships and allegiances are ever complicated by the war. Human perseverance and resilience are at the heart of this strong debut and the small Italian chapel remains, as it does in reality on the island of Lamb's Holm, as a symbol of these qualities.
The Antiques Roadshow, if Stephen King was the host... When art appraiser Anita Cassatt is sent to catalogue the extensive collection of reclusive artist Leo Kubin, it isn't the chill of the secluded house making her shiver, it's the silent audience of portraits clustered on every wall, watching her. The lawyer didn't share the dead artist's instructions for handling his art, and Anita and her team start work ignorant of the instructions designed to keep them safe. Safe from the art. There are secrets hiding in Kubin's house, and as Anita and her team discover, secrets don't want to stay hidden. Described as Caravaggio meets Poltergeist - Painted is a gothic horror novel with a decent serving of psychological unease and a healthy fear of the dark. Perfect for lovers of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House.
History shapes those who travel through it Following the unexplained disappearance of her parents, and in a last ditch attempt to save the antique store she has inherited from financial ruin, Sarah Lester takes on a deceased estate. Amongst the estate is a collection of vintage postcards which lead Sarah on a journey through time. Sarah is unprepared for what these postcards hint at about their reclusive former owner, and soon they complicate her life in unimaginable ways, transporting her to Victorian London, colonial New Zealand and to the British Raj in India. Sarah has to fight her twenty-first century instincts, and a century of emancipation, to survive. Traversing three continents and two centuries, where tiger hunts and ruby necklaces are irrevocably entwined with murders and mysteries, auction houses and antiquities, Sarah is drawn into the enigma that could solve her parents' disappearance, and the question of should she stay or should she go, gets harder and harder to answer, the deeper she delves into the past. Perfect for fans of the Outlander series and lovers of The Time Travelers Wife. What people are saying about Fifteen Postcards: "If history lessons had been this entertaining, I would have scored an A+!." -Andrene Low, author of the Excess Baggage series "This story is one for devotees of adventurous historical fiction and tales of plucky young women finding their feet." -Stephanie Jones, CoastFM Book Reviewer "I think the author has done a commendable job in bringing the story to life and it's obvious that she has used extensive historical research to ensure that the story always feels authentic and that's not an easy feat to pull off." -JaffaReadsToo, Book Blogger "Kirsten McKenzie has written a very unusual novel: part time travel, part historical, and part antique review. Sarah?s adventures in other times and other continents, linked together by the postcards and the antiques, are well researched and entertainingly written." -Historical Novel Society What reviewers are saying about Kirsten McKenzie: "McKenzie has done a spectacular job of combining well-researched history with a hint of mysterious intrigue." -Anxious Canadian Blog "Kirsten Mckenzie has written an excellent foray into historical fiction. I'm honestly not quite sure how she was able to keep up with and integrate the different settings, time periods, and characters without losing her place. But she managed it magnificently." -Author Sean Whittaker "McKenzie?s descriptions of the shop are well drawn and wonderfully evoke the jumbled chaos of layers of leftovers from centuries of everyday life." -NZBookLovers blog
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