Three historical novels featuring resilient women.

In The Tigress Caged, the third book in the Eleanor of Aquitaine Series, Queen Eleanor walks the tightrope between her love/hate marriage to Henry II of England and her loyalty to her children.

The Ship Wife challenges assumptions about female convict history. It tells the story of a real woman’s struggle for dignity and independence in an Empire built on slavery and injustice.

From Cornwall to Moonta: migration and resettlement charts the course of two families who struggle against the odds to make a life for themselves in colonial South Australia.

Helen Rayson-Hill’s short stories and memoir pieces have been published in anthologies, and she has written a children’s book, Kid Detectives. The story was inspired by her grandson who wanted to know how children entertained themselves before electronic devices filled their lives.

Helen has long been interested in Medieval history, especially in the life of Eleanor of Aquitaine. After many years of research, inspired originally by the play The Lion in Winter by James Goldman, Helen was motivated to write about Eleanor’s amazing life. Eleanor, the Firebrand Queen became the first in a series of historical novels about this Medieval feminist, followed by The Lion and the Tigress and now The Tigress Caged, the third volume.

Anne Vines won the Boroondara Prize in 2014 and the Keith Carroll Award in 2020 for short stories. She was shortlisted for the Alan Marshall Short Story Award 1987, The Age Short Story Award 2009, the Henry Handel Richardson Short Story Award 2011, and the international Wasafiri New Writing Prize, 2014. She was commended in the Varuna Harper-Collins Award in 2007 for her novel’s “compelling, very exciting voice” and “character-driven unusual twists” which “build up a head of steam”. Her novel, A Good Killer, entered in the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript in 2008, was commended by the judges for its “fast-paced storytelling”.

Anne has lived in England and Germany, and for shorter periods in Ireland, Wales, Spain, Italy and France. While traveling to UK, Ireland, Europe, USA, South America and Asia, she carried out research in libraries, archives and communities for her novels, including The Ship Wife.

Dianne Griffin lived in Moonta, South Australia, as a child. She loved the town and its people, especially her grandparents, Charles W and Eleanor B Bowden. At 25, Dianne set out to see the world, and re-immigrated to Cornwall and Britain. She married in 1970 and, settling in Ireland, raised three children.

With inspiration from her grandfather, who wrote in his preface to History of Agery, “Being blessed with a fairly retentive memory, and having in my possession much authentic information, I have a duty to pass it on – now that I have lived the allotted life span.” Dianne discerned the mantle had passed to her, and that the voices in From Cornwall to Moonta should come back to life.