Book Group
The Book Group meets on the 4th Monday of the month. We meet in a private home to review a monthly book provided by Monash Library.
Our first meeting for 2022 will be on Monday 28th February at 10.30 am at Val Silk's home. We will provide the next book then.
Recent books
Miss Lily's Lovely Ladies by Jackie French
A tale of espionage, love and passionate heroism. Inspired by true events, this is the story of how society's 'lovely ladies' won a war.
Each year at secluded Shillings Hall, in the snow-crisped English countryside, the mysterious Miss Lily draws around her young women selected from Europe's royal and most influential families. Her girls are taught how to captivate a man - and find a potential husband - at a dinner, in a salon, or at a grouse shoot, and in ways that would surprise outsiders. For in 1914, persuading and charming men is the only true power a woman has.
Sophie Higgs is the daughter of Australia's king of corned beef and the only 'colonial' brought to Shillings Hall. Of all Miss Lily's lovely ladies, however, she is also the only one who suspects Miss Lily's true purpose.
As the chaos of war spreads, women across Europe shrug off etiquette. The lovely ladies and their less privileged sisters become the unacknowledged backbone of the war, creating hospitals, canteens and transport systems where bungling officials fail to cope. And when tens of thousands can die in a single day's battle, Sophie must use the skills Miss Lily taught her to prevent war's most devastating weapon yet.
But is Miss Lily heroine or traitor? And who, exactly, is she?
The French Photographer by Natasha Lester
From the internationally bestselling author of The Paris Seamstress comes a story of courage, family and forgiveness.
1942
When Jessica May's successful modelling career is abruptly cut short, Vogue send her to war-torn Paris to cover the conflict as a correspondent. She's courageous and a fast-learner, but of course the military men make her life as difficult as possible.
Three friendships change that: journalist Martha Gellhorn encourages Jess to bend the rules; paratrooper Dan Hallworth shows her how to take pictures and write stories that matter; and a little girl, Victorine, who shows Jess how to open hear heart.
2005
Australian curator D'Arcy Hallworth arrives at a beautiful French chateau to manage a famous collection of photographs. What begins as just another job becomes far more disquieting as D'Arcy uncovers the true identity of the mysterious photographer and realises that she is connected to D'Arcy's own mother, Victorine.
Crossing a war-torn Europe from Italy to France, The French Photographer is a story of courage, family and forgiveness, by the bestselling author of The Paris Seamstress and A Kiss from Mr Fitzgerald.
Books read during the last few months were:
- The Night Guest by Fiona McFarlane
- The Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly
- The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart by Holly Ringland
- Milkman by Anna Burns
- The Drop Off by Fiona Harris and Mike McLeish
- Riptides by Kirsten Alexander
- The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce
- The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
- The Love song of Miss Queenie Hennessy
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