Harriet Wallace is a survivor who learns that a price must be paid for probing too far beneath the surface of life. This is a story of Harriet Wallace's journey towards self-awareness. From her early childhood in rural New Zealand, she is aware that she does not belong, that the attitudes of peop...
When Betty Guard steps ashore in Sydney, in 1834, she meets with a heroine's welcome. Her survival during a four-month kidnapping ordeal amongst Taranaki Maori is hailed as nothing short of a miracle. But questions about what really happened slowly surface within the elite governing circles of th...
The young woman, in a sleeveless white silk dress, stood at the window of a small apartment gazing out over the warm organic colours of Rome, its ancient earth and stone. It was evening, and across the roofs of buildings she saw another woman sitting at a window, level with her, looking out as sh...
‘Though in general you have been kind friends of mine for a long time now, I see, plainly, different traits in your characters and habits that are both very deep and dark, as well as very dangerous. Some of you are so self-conceited in your own wisdom, and so headstrong in your temper and disposi...
Can you imagine what it’s like on the floor of the Stock Exchange with one’s colleagues looking sideways at me? Our engagement has been announced, surely that was enough? The wings of love, indeed. Marriage is a private affair. I have no idea what you will say next to the press. If you are going ...
For a short while it shone brightly, then flickered, and finally faded away in the memory of most people. There were underground films being made at the time. One or two would filter through to the West, and in time to come Vlado would watch Jan Palach’s funeral on the tel...
As soon as he saw the figure in the boat he knew who it was. Something about the soft slope of the shoulders when she rested on the oars, the defiant tilt of the head. He had had her letter in his pockets for months, warning him of her arrival. I don’t know when I will come, she wrote, because to...
His sister Patricia hadn’t started high school at the time but later she was expected to go to science classes in that same room, as if nothing had happened.As if her brother’s flesh and blood hadn’t been spread on the walls.The room had been painted by then, the same drab institutional light cre...