Join us for an engaging Book Chat with Lauren Chater and Robyn Cadwallader about Lauren's latest book The Beauties.

When Emilia Lennox loses everything after her husband’s lands and title are confiscated, her beauty is her best bargaining chip with the only man who can restore their fortunes: King Charles II himself.

But the king’s favour comes at a price. He will pardon Emilia’s husband only if she agrees to be his mistress. Torn, Emilia comes up with a condition of her own: she will consent, but not until her portrait hangs among the famed Windsor Beauties, a series commissioned by the Duchess of York to showcase the fairest women in the royal retinue.

For Henry Greenhill, ambitious assistant to the court painter, the opportunity to paint Emilia’s portrait is a chance to step out of his master’s shadow. But his sitter proves as evasive as she is beautiful, and with barely a sketch to show for his efforts, Henry’s career is on the line. As the king’s patience wears thin, it’s clear that more than creative talent will be needed to capture this incomparable beauty on canvas...

Lauren Chater is the author of the historical novels The Lace Weaver, Gulliver’s Wife and The Winter Dress, which was longlisted for the 2022 ARA Historical Novel Prize. After working for many years in a variety of media roles, she turned her passion for reading and research into a professional pursuit. Her debut novel The Lace Weaver was published in 2018. She lives in Sydney with her husband and two children.

Robyn Cadwallader lives among vineyards in beautiful Ngunnawal country. Her first novel, The Anchoress (2015), was published internationally to critical acclaim. It won a Canberra Critics' Circle Award for fiction and was nominated for the Indie Book Awards, Adelaide Festival Awards, ABIA Awards and ACT Book of the Year Award. Her second novel, Book of Colours (2018), won the 2019 ACT Book of the Year Award, received a Canberra Critics' Circle Award and was shortlisted for the Voss Award. in 2023 she released The Fire and the Rose a vibrant, richly imagined and deeply moving novel set in the turbulent world of thirteenth-century England.

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