The Diamonds of Tilly Devine by Jackie French

Jackie French is one of Australia's most widely read authors, Senior Australian of the Year in 2015 and a former Australian Children's Laureate. The Diamonds of Tilly Devine is her new historical novel, and it is built around a real figure from Sydney's past.

Tilly Devine ran an empire of brothels, sly grog and gambling through 1920s and 1930s Sydney, a woman with jewels on her fingers and a pistol in her handbag. Nice girls did not work for her.

It is 1931, the depths of the Depression. When her mother dies, Constance McKie is left with almost nothing and three ways out: starve, jump from The Gap, or take work no respectable girl would consider. Tilly offers her a place as one of her diamonds, a role that is glamorous, secret and demanding, and kept well away from the gang wars and blackmail running underneath it. Then a man is murdered in the house that has become Connie's home.

A standalone historical novel set in Depression-era Sydney, for readers of Kimberley Freeman, Tea Cooper and Natasha Lester.