Violet Town
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Violet Town
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See moreViolet Town is a captivating story of forbidden love and loss in the time of war.
Violet Town is a captivating story of forbidden love and loss in the time of war.
It’s 1939, and the Second World War has just begun. Catherine Hawkins, an orphan and scholarship student with dreams of Oxford University, is entering her final year at Dashwood Boarding School in the English countryside.
Intelligent, ambitious and determined to shape a future beyond the limitations of her upbringing, Cate has little time for distraction. But when charismatic American student Joseph Hume arrives at the school, Cate finds herself pulled between the life she has carefully planned and a love that threatens to upend everything.
Set against the uncertainty of wartime England, Violet Town is a sweeping historical debut exploring ambition, identity, class, first love and loss.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781764132183
Publisher: Bakers Lanes Books
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 15 September 2026
Country: Australia
Imprint: Bakers Lanes Books
Illustration: Illustrations
DIMENSIONS
Width: 129.0mm
Height: 198.0mm
Weight: 340g
Pages: 352
About the Author
Bryony McGuinness resides in Melbourne’s South-Eastern suburbs with her fiancé, David and furball-son, Archer. The second eldest of six, she took to writing from a very young age, and it was in Year 8, when she was daydreaming in the classroom, that the early stages of Violet Town were born, paving the way for what would become an ever-evolving project spanning two decades. In her spare time, Bryony enjoys reading and travel, in 2025 having combined her passions to explore the sites and hometowns of Dickens, Austin, Carroll, Shakespeare and the Bronte sisters. Having lived abroad in her mid-twenties, and travelled the world, she has drawn from ample inspiration and life experience to arrive at her debut novel, Violet Town.
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