Lucy Sussex

The gripping story of Australia's first female crime writer and her career-criminal sonWhen Mary Fortune arrived in Melbourne with her infant son in 1855, she was determined to reinvent herself. The Victorian goldfields were just the place.After a time selling sly grog and a bigamous marriage to a policeman, Mary became a pioneering journalist and author. The Detective's Album was the first book of detective stories to be published in Australia and the first by a woman to be published anywhere in the world. Her work appeared in magazines and newspapers for over forty years - but none of her readers knew who she was. She wrote using pseudonyms, often adopting the voice of a male narrator to write about 'unladylike' subjects.When Mary died in 1911, her identity was nearly lost. In Outrageous Fortunes, Megan Brown and Lucy Sussex retrieve Fortune's astonishing career and discover an equally absorbing story in her illegitimate son, George. While Mary was writing crime, George was committing it, with convictions for theft and bank robbery. In their intertwined stories, crime fiction meets true crime, and Melbourne's literary bohemia consorts with the criminal underworld.'Mary Fortune's bold fictions electrified colonial Australia. But her own story, pieced together by two tenacious literary detectives, was best of all.' -Gideon Haigh'A fine introduction to the author and her work.' -Garry Disher'Outrageous Fortunes is a delight: beautifully written and carefully researched, it is an engrossing, illuminating and ultimately deeply moving portrait of an extraordinary woman and her ne'er-do-well son. The pioneering crime writer Mary Helena Fortune finally receives the biography she deserves, and no mystery reader should be without it.' -John Connolly

In 1797 an extraordinary visionary died, leaving behind a grieving husband, a two-year-old daughter, and a newborn. The woman was Mary Wollstonecraft, her daughter Fanny Imlay, and her baby Mary Godwin, who, through many trials and tribulations, grew up to become the remarkable Mary Shelley, creator of one of the most important books in literature: Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus. While many books have examined both women's lives, their remarkable similarities, their passions, joys, and their grief, A Vindication of Monsters: Essays on Mary Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft, delves deeper into the stories behind both women, their connections to historical events, society, their philosophies, and their political contributions to their time. These essays and memoirs explore Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, and Shelley's circle of friends, including her husband, the capricious poet Percy Shelley; the libertine Romantic Lord Byron; the first modern vampire author John Polidori; and other contemporary creatives who continue to be inspired by both women today.

Original novellas by Juliet Marillier, Lucy Sussex, Joanne Anderton, Cat Sparks, Stephanie Gunn, Angela Rega, and Susan Wardle. Seven original novellas from some of Australia's premier fantasy writers. In these pages you'll find trolls and angels, princes and puritans, cats and captives, and master crafters of materials and machines.

Original novellas by Juliet Marillier, Lucy Sussex, Joanne Anderton, Cat Sparks, Stephanie Gunn, Angela Rega, and Susan Wardle. Seven original novellas from some of Australia's premier fantasy writers. In these pages you'll find trolls and angels, princes and puritans, cats and captives, and master crafters of materials and machines.