Barbara Ewing Ordre des livres (chronologique)

The Victorian gossipmongers called them The Petticoat Men. But to young Mattie Stacey they are Freddie and Ernest, her gentlemen lodgers. She doesn't care that they dress up in sparkling gowns to attend society balls as 'Fanny and Stella'. She only cares that they are kind to her, make her laugh, and pay their rent on time. Then one fateful night, Fanny and Stella are arrested, and Mattie – outraged but staunch – is dragged into a shocking court trial, hailed in newspapers all over England as 'The Scandal of the Century'.

Een begaafde jonge schilderes in het 18e eeuwse Engeland maakt haar talent ondergeschikt aan dat van haar minder getalenteerde broer.

As a child, Rosetta is fascinated by words and loves being told stories. She thinks she is named after the Princess Rosetta of the fairytales, who married the King of the Peacocks and lived happily ever after. But when she finds that it is a mysterious small port town in Egypt that gave her her name, her interest in hieroglyphics is born. Years later, when Rose is an older, wiser and sadder woman, it is her love of language that saves her life. The French Revolution; the rise of the power of the English church; the battles for Egypt between the British and the French; the discovery of the hieroglyphs on the Rosetta Stone in that same small port town - and above all the machinations of a rich, amoral, social-climbing member of the new' aristocracy and the extraordinary characters that surround him - all whirlpool together to carry Rose into France and a shared moment with Napoleon Bonaparte, and into the dark, unknown world of North Africa in her search to understand the meaning of words, and to find a child of her own.

Barbara Ewing, geboren 1944 in Neuseeland, machte Karriere als Schauspielerin und Autorin. Sie wurde in der «Royal Drama Academy» in London ausgebildet und war mit vielen Fernseh- und Theaterrollen erfolgreich. Daneben hat sie zahlreiche Romane verfasst.

1849. At sixteen, Harriet Cooper has only one person keeping her from ruin, her older sister, Mary. Their father, Sir Charles, is obsessed with his youngest child and because their mother is dead it is Mary who keeps watch over Harriet's bedroom door. But when Mary dies in London's cholera epidemic, Harriet becomes a prisoner in her own home, her father would rather she acted as his wife than his daughter and she can see nothing but horror before her. It seems impossible, but her only escape route is to flee after her cousin Edward who has recently emigrated to the new colony of New Zealand. Sheltered as her life has been, Harriet discovers untapped reserves of bravery and courage and manages to get herself on a boat bound for Wellington. But as soon as her father realises what she has done, he chases her across oceans and uncharted waters to the other side of the world, where thousands have gone seeking a new life and where Harriet thought he would never find her...

Een Nieuw-Zeelandse wordt volwassen in een gemeenschap die erg neerkijkt op de Maori's en ondervindt veel onbegrip van haar familie als ze in de jaren vijftig een relatie met een van hen aangaat.

To the group of thespians, now all in their fifties, meeting for a drama school reunion, age doesn't wipe out desire, ambition or memory. So when the celebrations culminate in an accusation of rape, the past comes flooding back.