Mrs. M

From one of Australia's foremost journalists, Luke Slattery, comes a bravura literary achievement, a rich and intense novel of an imagined history of desire, ambition and dashed dreams, and a portrait of one passionate, unforgettable woman - Elizabeth Macquarie. Elizabeth Macquarie, widow of the disgraced former Governor of Australia, Lachlan Macquarie, is in mourning - not only for her husband, but the loss of their shared dream to transform the penal colony of Australia into a bright new world. Over the course of one long sleepless night on the windswept isle of Mull, she remembers her life in that wild and strange country; a revolution of ideas as dramatic as any in history; and her dangerous alliance with the brilliant, mercurial Francis Greenway, the colony's maverick architect. A stirring, provocative and thrilling novel of passion, ideas, reforming zeal and desire.