Historical Fiction Spotlight
Chinese Funeral Paper Money: The Feast of the Hungry Ghosts
Picture a Gold Rush mining town on a warm summer night. Red lanterns sway in the trees. Priests in white robes and pale blue satin caps move through the crowd carrying lighted tapers, chanting, while musicians fill the air with a strange, beautiful clamour — reed pipes, cornstalk fiddles, muffled drums and crashing cymbals. The…
The Secret Language of Victorian Jewellery
While researching my next historical novel, The Runaway Heiress, I’ve been spending a lot of time with Marianne, the heroine of the story. Marianne is the daughter of a London goldsmith, and as I’ve been building her world I’ve discovered something fascinating: jewellery played a far larger role in Victorian social life than it does…
Horses, Poetry, and Scandal in Petunia’s Promise
Respected historian Geoffrey Blainey once said, “Perhaps no country in the world worshipped the horse with the same fierce veneration as Australia in the nineteenth century.” As I wrote Petunia’s Promise, I was captivated by this unique Australian devotion to racing—especially through the eyes of Petunia, the sister who loved horses most of all. A…
The Scandalous Scent of 24 Old Bond Street
🌸 A Perfume Fit for Queens—and Heroines In Poppy’s Dilemma, the scent of 24 Old Bond Street stirs powerful memories for Arabella Barclay. A symbol of joy, luxury—and bittersweet longing—it returns in Petunia’s Promise as a haunting echo of her fading grip on reality. But what is the story behind this beguiling perfume? The answer…