Kate Grenville

A beautifully written, clear-eyed investigation of the science of scent and the power of the fragrance industry, from one of Australia's greatest writers. Kate Grenville had always associated perfume with elegance and beauty. Then the headaches started. Like perhaps a quarter of the population, Grenville reacts badly to the artificial fragrances around us—other people's perfumes, and all those scented cosmetics,...

What does it mean to be on land taken from others? What does it mean to be on land that was taken from other people? Now that we know how the taking was done, what do we do with that knowledge? Kate Grenville is no stranger to the past. Her success and fame as a writer exploded when she published...

Elizabeth Macarthur's Letters by Kate Grenville is a captivating collection, serving as the inspiration for her bestselling, award-winning novel A Room Made of Leaves. These letters formed the foundation for Kate Grenville's acclaimed novel, A Room Made of Leaves. They inspired the depiction of her imagined Elizabeth Macarthur—shrewd, subtle, and passionate. Through these letters, we get a glimpse into the...

After a childhood of poverty and petty crime in the slums of London, William Thornhill is transported to New South Wales for the term of his natural life. With his wife Sal and children in tow, he arrives in a harsh land that feels at first like a death sentence. But among the convicts, there is a whisper that freedom...

The first new novel in almost ten years from award-winning, bestselling author Kate Grenville. What if Elizabeth Macarthur—wife of the notorious John Macarthur, wool baron in the earliest days of Sydney—had written a shockingly frank secret memoir? And what if novelist Kate Grenville had miraculously found and published it? That's the starting point for A Room Made of Leaves, a...

Kate Grenville's latest bestselling novel, now in a beautiful paperback edition. What if Elizabeth Macarthur—wife of the notorious John Macarthur, wool baron in the earliest days of Sydney—had written a shockingly frank secret memoir? And what if novelist Kate Grenville had miraculously found and published it? Marriage to a ruthless bully, the impulses of her heart, the search for power...

Kate Grenville's latest bestselling novel, now in a smaller format and featuring a beautiful updated cover design. What if Elizabeth Macarthur—wife of the notorious John Macarthur, wool baron in the earliest days of Sydney—had written a shockingly frank secret memoir? And what if novelist Kate Grenville had miraculously found and published it? Marriage to a ruthless bully, the impulses of...

Restless Dolly Maunder is shortlisted for the 2024 Women's Prize for Fiction. An exquisite portrait of Kate Grenville's complex, conflicted grandmother—a woman Kate feared as a child, and only came to understand in adulthood. Dolly Maunder was born at the end of the nineteenth century, when society's long-locked doors were starting to creak ajar for women. Growing up in a...

Dolly Maunder was born at the end of the nineteenth century, when society’s long-locked doors were starting to creak ajar for women. Growing up in a poor farming family in country New South Wales but clever, energetic and determined, Dolly spent her restless life pushing at those doors. Most women like her have disappeared from view, remembered only in family...

From the beginning, Jack and I were friends. Somehow our way of looking at things fitted together. He never called me Dolly, the way the others did, only my full and proper name. Sarah Thornhill is the youngest child of William Thornhill, convict-turned-landowner on the Hawkesbury River. She grows up in the fine house her father is so proud of,...

This is Albion Gidley Singer at the pen, a man with a weakness for a good fact. The first fact is always the hardest: you have to begin somewhere, and such is the nature of this intractable universe that the only thing you can start with is yourself. Dark Places, a companion novel to Lilian's Story, is the tale of...

Listen, I told myself, and heard the waves against the harbour-wall, a gull being peevish, the white tapping stick of a blind man against the stones. Listen, I told myself, this is history. Loosely inspired by the legendary Sydney bohemian Bea Miles, Kate Grenville’s much-loved debut novel recounts the life of the irrepressible Lilian Una Singer: from wealthy middle-class girlhood...

I told them to go into the scrub and disperse the tribe. Disperse? That is a strange word. What do you mean by dispersing? Firing at them. Two decades after a massacre of local Aboriginal people, the former residents of a Queensland town have reunited to celebrate the progress and prosperity of their community. Tom Dorahy, returning to his hometown,...

The Secret River, a novel by Kate Grenville, moved and exhilarated many people when it was first published in 2005. Readers marvelled at the subtlety of its language and the power of Grenville's storytelling. They recognised that this simple tale of a poor convict family settling on the banks of the Hawkesbury River in the early nineteenth century represented a...

Nance was a week short of her sixth birthday when she and Frank were roused out of bed in the dark and lifted into the buggy, squashed in with bedding, the cooking pots rattling around in the back, and her mother shouting back towards the house: Goodbye, Rothsay, I hope I never see you again! When Kate Grenville's mother died,...

Kate Grenville's Orange Prize-winning novel The Idea of Perfection is the story of the small town of Karakarook, and of Douglas Cheeseman and Harvey Savage—two people who seem the least likely in the world to fall in love. Unlike Felicity Porcelline, a woman dangerously haunted by the idea of perfection, they come to understand that what looks like weakness can...

Daniel Rooke, soldier and astronomer, was always an outsider. As a young lieutenant of marines, he arrives in New South Wales on the First Fleet in 1788 and sees his chance. He sets up his observatory away from the main camp and begins the scientific work that he hopes will make him famous. Aboriginal people soon start to visit his...

This is Australia's past as you won't read it in any history book. Joan Makes History offers a fresh perspective, as Joan pops up in famous moments throughout history and provides her irreverent female version of these events. Joan remakes history in her own image and raises thought-provoking questions: who gets written into history, who gets written out, and why?...

The Writing Book doesn't just talk about how to write fiction; it takes you, step by step, through the process of doing it. Each chapter concentrates on one aspect of writing: getting started, bringing characters to life, writing convincing dialogue, revising and writer's block. Exercises in each chapter are carefully structured so that each one builds on the one before....

'I stood there holding the hundred-year-old letter with a feeling that was familiar from other archives, other bulging files of dog-eared paper. It was a blood-running-fast, itchy-palm, eyes-wide-open feeling of stumbling on something. A story ...' Rummaging around in the Archives one afternoon, Kate Grenville comes across an innocuous-looking file full of letters about a schoolteacher in country New South...

Kate Grenville had always associated perfume with elegance and beauty. Then the headaches started. Like perhaps a quarter of the population, Grenville reacts badly to the artificial fragrances around us: other people's perfumes, and all those scented cosmetics, cleaning products, and air fresheners. On a book tour in 2015, dogged by ill health, she started wondering: what's in fragrance? Who...