A highly enjoyable novel set in the year of the Indian Mutiny, IThe Peachgrowers' Almanac /Iis about feisty women, the devotion of sisters, and the Victorians' obsession with photography, medicine, collecting, inventions, science - and experiments. The peachgrowers of the title are sisters with a passion for botany. The pretty twin, Lilian, in mysterious disgrace, has been married off to a dreary missionary. Plain Alice is left at home to help her father look after his monstrous collection of pseudo-scientific artefacts from every corner of the globe. Lilian has been forbidden to communicate with Alice, but from India she sends a photograph in which one of the 'men' standing over a dead tiger - the rakish one in hat and with gun - turns out to be none other than Lilian herself. Alice begins to decode her sister's secret message... Tongue-in-cheek, comic and horrifying, IThe Peachgrowers' Almanac /Iilluminates the dark heart of Victorian hypocrisy and selfishness, yet at the same time is engaging and very funny. Readers will become completely involved with Alice and Lilian - and their hair-raising escape.
