Arianwen Parkes-Lockwood Arianwen Parkes-Lockwood i(28247538 works by)
Born: Established: 1987 ;
Gender: Female
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2 5 y separately published work icon My Brilliant Sister Amy Brown , Cammeray : Simon and Schuster Australia , 2024 27054750 2024 single work novel

'While Stella Miles Franklin took on the world, her beloved sister Linda led a short, domestic life as a wife, mother and sister. In a remarkable, genre-bending debut novel Amy Brown thrillingly reimagines those two lives – and her own – to explore and explode the contradictions embedded in brilliant careers and a woman’s place in the world. Sliding Doors meets Wifedom.

'Stella Miles Franklin’s autobiographical novel My Brilliant Career launched one of the most famous names in Australian letters. Funny, bold, often biting about its characters, the novel and its young author had a lot in common. Miles went on to live a large, fiercely independent and bohemian life of travel, art and freedom.

'Not so her beloved sister Linda. Quiet, contained, conventional, Linda was an inversion of Stella. A family peacemaker who married the man Stella would not, bore a son and died of pneumonia at 25.

'In this reflective, witty and revealing novel, Amy Brown rescues Linda, setting her in counterpoint with Stella, and with the lives of two contemporary women: Ida, a writer whose writing life is on hold as she teaches and raises her young daughter; and Stella, a singer-songwriter who has sacrificed everything for a career, now forcibly put on hold. Binding the two is the novella that Linda might have written to her sister Stella – a brilliant alternative vision of My Brilliant Career.

'Innovative and involving, My Brilliant Sister is an utterly convincing (and hilarious) portrait of Miles Franklin and a moving, nuanced exploration of the balance women still have to strike between careers and family lives. It gives a fresh take on one of Australia’s most celebrated writers and an insight into life now.' (Publication summary)
2 5 y separately published work icon Her Sunburnt Country : The Extraordinary Literary Life of Dorothea Mackellar Deborah FitzGerald , Cammeray : Simon and Schuster Australia , 2023 26386903 2023 single work biography 'The first definitive biography of Australian poet and writer Dorothea Mackellar, author of the celebrated poem 'My Country.' 'I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains...' Though many Australians know lines from Dorothea Mackellar's classic poem 'My Country' by heart, very little has been written about the poet's extraordinary life. From her childhood and youth in Sydney's Point Piper and Pittwater, to discovering her love for the Australian landscape on her brother's farm in Gunnedah, Dorothea engaged with the intellectual elite of Sydney and abroad as she embarked on a decades long literary career that saw her linked to some of the leading lights of her day. A keen traveller, Dorothea visited Japan, Egypt, Fiji, New Zealand and the United States between longer stints in the literary heart of London, where she socialised with the likes of Joseph Conrad and Ezra Pound. At home, she counted among her friends the famed Sydney Herald war correspondent, Charles Bean, and journalistic royalty in the form of the Fairfax family. Battling against a masculine tradition of Australian bush poetry led by the likes of Banjo Paterson and Henry Lawson, Dorothea Mackellar boldly carved out a place for herself, leaving an indelible mark on the Australian imagination. Now, for the first time, the poet's unconventional life story is told - a hidden gem of Australian history, and a tale of one woman's extraordinary passion for her poetry, her family, and her country.' 

(Publication summary)
2 4 y separately published work icon Blackwater Jacqueline Ross , South Melbourne : Affirm Press , 2023 26209124 2023 single work novel mystery thriller

'A baby will never be born at Blackwater.

'There is much that heavily pregnant Grace still doesn’t know about her new husband King’s background. So, when word comes that King’s father is dying, Grace is eager to accompany him to his childhood home, Blackwater, located in a remote part of Tasmania.

'Things go badly from the start. The house is in terrible repair, King’s dying father yells at Grace to leave and King’s twin sister, Ruth, seems disturbed by Grace’s presence. After his father’s death, King convinces Grace they must stay and help Ruth settle the estate, but as time stretches on he grows strange and distant. When Grace learns about Blackwater’s dark history, she begins to fear that it is the house itself exerting an evil influence on her husband.

'Feeling increasingly isolated, and with the birth of her child looming, Grace knows she must uncover the secrets of Blackwater if she hopes to free her family from its grip.' (Publication summary)
2 y separately published work icon Sisters in Captivity Colin W. Burgess , Cammeray : Simon and Schuster Australia , 2023 26042988 2023 single work biography

'For readers of Anzac Girls and The Nazis Knew My Name, the incredible account of Sister Betty Jeffrey OAM and the Australian war nurses who survived the bombing of hospital ship MV Vyner Brooke in February 1942, and subsequently spent three years in Japanese prison camps in Sumatra.

'During those perilous years surviving in squalid conditions, Sister Jeffrey kept a secret diary of day-to-day events which, after the war, was turned into a book and radio serial: White Coolies. She would often write of the powerful sisterhood that evolved as the POWs took strength from each other, even forming an ‘orchestra’. White Coolies was a major inspiration for the 1997 Bruce Beresford film Paradise Road, starring Glenn Close, Frances McDormand and Cate Blanchett amongst others.

'Sisters in Captivity builds on those diaries to not only re-live the years the nurses spent as POWs but also learn of the early life and influences that encouraged Betty Jeffrey into a life of nursing, and the outstanding work she carried out for the rest of her life. Featuring personal photos of Betty courtesy of her family and her drawings from the prison camps.' (Publication summary)
3 20 y separately published work icon Wifedom : Mrs Orwell's Invisible Life Anna Funder , Melbourne : Penguin , 2023 26029796 2023 single work biography

'A blazing, genre-bending masterpeice from one of the most inventive writers of our time.

'Looking for wonder and some reprieve from the everyday, Anna Funder slips into the pages of her hero George Orwell. As she watches him create his writing self, she tries to remember her own…

'When she uncovers his forgotten wife, it’s a revelation. Eileen O’Shaughnessy’s literary brilliance shaped Orwell’s work and her practical nous saved his life. But why – and how – was she written out of the story?

'Using newly discovered letters from Eileen to her best friend, Funder recreates the Orwells’ marriage, through the Spanish Civil War and WW II in London. As she rolls up the screen concealing Orwell’s private life she is led to question what it takes to be a writer – and what it is to be a wife.

'Compelling and utterly original, Wifedom speaks to the unsung work of women everywhere today, while offering a breathtakingly intimate view of one of the most important literary marriages of the 20th century. It is a book that speaks to our present moment as much as it illuminates the past.'(Publication summary)
2 y separately published work icon Echoes of War Tania Blanchard , Cammeray : Simon and Schuster Australia , 2021 22437010 2021 single work novel historical fiction

'Set in Mussolini’s Italy amid great upheaval, this is the story of one woman’s determination to find her place in a world that men are threatening to tear apart. Another heart-rending novel inspired by a true story from Australia's bestselling author of The Girl from Munich.

'Calabria, Italy, 1936

'In a remote farming village nestled in the mountains that descend into the sparkling Ionian Sea, young and spirited Giulia Tallariti longs for something more. While she loves her home and her lively family, she would much rather follow in her nonna’s footsteps and pursue her dream of becoming a healer.

'But as Mussolini’s focus shifts to the war in Europe, civil unrest looms. Whispers of war are at every corner and her beloved village, once safe from the fascist agenda of the North, is now in very real danger.

'Caught between her desire to forge her own path and her duty to her family, Giulia must draw on the passion in her heart and the strength of her conviction. Can she find a way to fulfill her dreams or will the echoes of war drown out her voice?' (Publication summary)
2 6 y separately published work icon Islands Peggy Frew , Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2019 14978689 2019 single work novel

'One family: Helen and John and their daughters Junie and Anna. Helen falls out of love with John, leaves, finds someone else, then a series of others, not paying enough attention to her daughters along the way. John is consumed by jealousy and hopelessness and in his self‐absorption also fails to notice signals from the girls. Junie grows up brittle and defensive, Anna difficult and rebellious.

'One tragedy: When 15‐year‐old Anna fails to come home one night, her mother's unconcerned, as she's done it before and always returned, so it takes three days for her to report it. But this time she doesn't come back... Anna has disappeared and the remaining family members spend the rest of their lives trying to make up for her devastating loss. Each of them must find their own way to cope. (Publication summary)
3 y separately published work icon The Lace Weaver Lauren Chater , Cammeray : Simon and Schuster Australia , 2018 14561812 2018 single work novel historical fiction

'Each lace shawl begins and ends the same way – with a circle. Everything is connected with a thread as fine as gossamer, each life affected by what has come before it and what will come after.

'1941, Estonia. As Stalin’s brutal Red Army crushes everything in its path, Katarina and her family survive only because their precious farm produce is needed to feed the occupying forces.

'Fiercely partisan, Katarina battles to protect her grandmother’s precious legacy – the weaving of gossamer lace shawls stitched with intricate patterns that tell the stories passed down through generations.

'While Katarina struggles to survive the daily oppression, another young woman is suffocating in her prison of privilege in Moscow. Yearning for freedom and to discover her beloved mother’s Baltic heritage, Lydia escapes to Estonia.

'Facing the threat of invasion by Hitler’s encroaching Third Reich, Katarina and Lydia and two idealistic young soldiers, insurgents in the battle for their homeland, find themselves in a fight for life, liberty and love.'

Source: Publlisher's blurb.
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