Kirsten Mckenzie: 5 books

During a major overhaul of British imperial policy following the Napoleonic Wars, an escaped convict reinvented himself as an improbable activist, renowned for his exposés of government misconduct and corruption in the Cape Colony and New South Wales. Charting scandals unleashed by the man known...

If art can capture a soul, what happens when one of those souls escapes? People have been going missing from the home of reclusive artist Leo Kubin for decades, but no one told art appraiser Anita Cassatt, or her team. When they start cataloguing Kubin's extensive collection of portraits...

Elijah Cone’s doctor said he could help him. His doctor lied. Hiding from a traumatic past, Elijah Cone spends his remaining days in the Rose Haven Retirement Home avoiding contact with the other residents, desperate for death to relieve him of his all-consuming guilt. Elijah isn't...

Mary is desperate to escape her embittered mother. So when her marriage to a prosperous sea captain is arranged, she embraces the damp salt air, cramped conditions and bad food. She sets sail on the Isabella, away from the land of her childhood towards unseen places and an unknown future. But being...

Emilio and Rosa are childhood sweethearts, engaged to be married. But it is 1942 and the war has taken Emilio far from Italy, to a tiny Orkney island where he is a POW. Rosa must wait for him to return and help her mother run the family hotel on the shores of Lake Como, in Italy. Feeling increasingly...