166 The Australian Women’s Weekly | OCTOBER 2019
Books
Wartime survivalThe Artist’s Portrait by Julie Keys, Hachette
In Sydney’s Surry Hills in 1 914 ,
barrowmen sell parsnips and potatoes,
boys drag billycarts with scavenged
wood, and Muriel Kemp, 10, picks
her way back from artist Max Jenner’s
studio, his precious drawing of a
running rabbit rolled up her sleeve.
Her “barbarian” father has tried to
sell the 13-year-old as a nude model
but Jenner has declined, insteadoffering her sixpence to come back
and help at the studio. Muriel comes
to wonder if any girl has as good
a job as she. By 17, she’s an artist’s
apprentice but her abstract paintings
“won’t ll the belly”, observes
Jenner, who paints pink, sugary-
lipped women. When he dies, Muriel
inherits his paints, brushes and easel,
and a mysterious new life begins.4 historical novels
Rags to riches 1920s London Brotherly betrayal Great escapeTHE CHOCOLATE
MAKER’S WIFE
by Karen Brooks,
HarperCollins
King Charles II has brought
his Portuguese wife, Queen
Catherine, to England. New
fashionable fancies include
drinking chocolate. At the
Maiden Voyage Tavern,
unruly customers lust after
the delicacy and Rosamund,
the stepdaughter of the
landlord, is a natural
in handling the drunks.
When she falls in front of a
horse trying to escape her
stepbrothers’ lusty advances,
Sir Everard Blithman whisks
her off to London. Now Lady
Rosamund Blithman, a rich
chocolate maker’s wife, she
needs her sweet-talking skills
to be accepted in society.THE RUNAWAY
DAUGHTER
by Joanna Rees,
Pan Macmillan
On the run from a terrible
crime she was forced to
commit and from her
oppressive family in
Lancashire, England, Anna
Darton dreams of a new
start. She leaps on a train to
London with a new name,
in defi ance of her father’s
warnings about the city’s
“fl agrantly immoral”
inhabitants. At fi rst, folk are
sympathetic – and the
doorman at the Midland
Grand Hotel is always ready
to serve. But when her
money runs out, she ends up
at the mercy of a rundown
boarding house, and her
courage deserts her.STONE
COUNTRY
by Nicole Alexander,
Penguin
In South Australia, 1901 ,
Alastair’s “must-do list” of tests
of manhood for his younger
brother Ross – dangerously
dodging traffi c, badly injuring
a cyclist on a penny farthing- is getting more reckless
by the day. Somehow, in the
eyes of their strict father, loyal
Ross is always culpable. By 1919,
little has changed. Reliable Ross
runs the family property while
soldier Alastair has vanished.
Has he deserted? The last Ross
heard, his brother had met a girl
in London during the war, but
he’s been missing for three
years, and Ross’s dreams of
pearl diving with his big brother
have turned to dust.
THE WOMAN FROM
SAINT GERMAIN
by J.R. Lonie,
Simon & Schuster
It’s Paris, 1941 , and romance
writer Eleanor feels a shadow
of her former self. In the
Swastika-fi lled city,
everything is scarce. There’s
no coal and her freezing
fi ngers can’t type. She sees
herself as a cross between
Minnie Mouse and a grizzly
bear as she stares at a
portrait of her former
statuesque auburn-haired
beauty. Well educated by her
physician father, she has
money in her own right but
now she’s stranded and her
French lover is dead. She
joins the refugees heading
for Spain when an enigmatic
stranger saves her life.REVIEWS BY KATIE EKBERG, JULIET RIEDEN AND ROWENA MARA.