Amy Walters

Melanie Joosten’s third novel follows three women who are brought into contact during the fight for British women’s suffrage. Beatrice Taylor, captivated by the movement, becomes a full-blown militant. Her college roommate Catherine Dawson stays out of the direct struggle, preferring to advance women’s rights through a trail-blazing career in scientific research. Ida Bennett, a widow, supports herself and her children as a warden in Holloway Prison. Although sympathetic to the cause of women’s emancipation, when the suffragettes are jailed she is responsible for disciplining them.

In her ninth novel, The Marriage Portrait, British writer Maggie O’Farrell engages with the enduring speculation that Lucrezia de’ Medici, daughter of the Grand Duke of Tuscany Cosimo de’ Medici, was murdered in 1561 by her husband Alfonso II D’Este, the duke of Ferrara.