Bondi, 1948. The war is over, the beach is filling again, and in the deputy's rooms at the old Pavilion a book club is taking root. Around its table gather four very different women: a war widow keeping a boarding house, a young battler raising her sister on a rent tin, a prickly heiress who came for the books, and the woman who sets out the chairs for everyone but herself.
Each season belongs to one of them, and each closes on a full happy ending; she stays at the table to see the others home. These are slow-burn, closed-door romances of grief, pride, masks and second chances, warm rather than suspenseful, for readers of Maeve Binchy and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.
The Books
Book 1
Summer at the Bondi Pavilion
The sixth cup goes back in the dresser every morning, eight years on. Then a carpenter settles on her back step with a block of spotted gum and her boy at his elbow, and habit stops feeling like safety.
Not yet on sale
Book 2
Autumn at the Bondi Pavilion
The rent tin holds three-and-six and Friday is coming. A man who says only that he is a cook leaves a good cut of fish inside her door, and she has never once taken charity.
Not yet on sale
Book 3
Winter at the Bondi Pavilion
A tap has dripped in her Manly laundry since April and nothing in eight quiet rooms obliges her to fix it. At the Pavilion a handyman hangs a gate true, wants no praise for it, and will not be charmed.
Not yet on sale
Book 4
Spring at the Bondi Pavilion
Marg has set out the chairs for twenty years and never needed one herself. Now the Council is pricing the Pavilion by the hour, and the joiner who could save its colonnade works a long way inland and up.
Not yet on sale
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