Sophia Barnes

In the opening pages of Kiera Lindsey's fictionalised history, The Convict's Daughter, a young 'currency lass' named Mary Ann Gill makes her precarious way to the third-floor ledge of her family's hotel in central Sydney, readying herself for the descent. 'Clutching hard to the wooden frame, the fifteen-year-old girl hoists herself up, knees first', all too ignorant of the turmoil and scandal whic ... (read more)

Lila is the third of Marilynne Robinson’s novels to take the small Iowan town of Gilead as its setting. It follows the Pulitzer Prize-winning Gilead (2004) and the Orange Prize-winning Home (2008). Robinson has attributed her earlier return to this fictional territory, and the lives of the Ames and Boughton families, to her unwillingness to bid them farewell at the conclusion of Gilead. We have ... (read more)

Over half the stories collected in Between My Father and the King have not been published before – whether through reluctance, initial rejection, or restraint – and are only now, with this posthumous publication, reaching an audience. Others have appeared everywhere from the New Zealand School Journal to The New Yorker, from the mid-1940s through to 2010. ... (read more)