Julian Leatherdale – December 27 2020

Julian is a novelist, scriptwriter, playwright, researcher and journalist. He has worked as an image researcher at the State Library of New South Wales, a policy briefs writer for the NSW Premier in The Cabinet Office, and as the public relations manager for a hotel school in the Blue Mountains. His theatre work includes four satirical cabarets, two musicals (Alex in Videoland and The Golem of Prague), a short play monologue (A Life in Ten Meals) and the black comedy, The Man Who Became Santa Claus. Julian discovered a passion for popular history as a staff writer, researcher and photo editor for Time-Life’s 16-volume Australians At War series and went on to research and co-write two Film Australia-ABC documentaries, Return to Sandakan (about one of the worst POW atrocities of the Pacific war) and The Forgotten Force (about the post-war occupation of Japan by Australians as part of BCOF). His first novel, Palace of Tears, is inspired by the history of the Hydro Majestic hotel and his essay on the Hydro Majestic and Mark Foy was published on the Dictionary of Sydney website for the 2015 Blue Mountains Icons project. The Opal Dragonfly, Julian’s second novel, is set in Elizabeth Bay House in 1850s Sydney, and his latest novel, Death in the Ladies’ Goddess Club, is set within the shady underbelly of 1930s Kings Cross and its glamorous fringe. Julian has written one young adult novel, The Phantasmic Detective Agency, published in 2020.

Palace of Tears
Allen & Unwin, 2015; ISBN 9781925267464
Angie loved Mr Fox’s magnificent, absurd hotel. In fact, it was her one true great love. But … today Angie was so cross, so fed up with everybody and everything, she would probably cheer if a wave of fire swept over the cliff and engulfed the Palace and all its guests. A sweltering summer’s day, January 1914: the charismatic and ruthless Adam Fox throws a lavish birthday party for his son and heir at his elegant clifftop hotel in the Blue Mountains. Everyone is invited except Angie, the girl from the cottage next door. The day will end in tragedy, a punishment for a family’s secrets and lies. In 2013, Fox’s granddaughter Lisa, seeks the truth about the past. Who is this Angie her mother speaks of: ‘the girl who broke all our hearts’? Why do locals call Fox’s hotel the ‘palace of tears’? Behind the grandeur and glamour of its famous guests and glittering parties, Lisa discovers a hidden history of passion and revenge, loyalty and love. A grand piano burns in the night, a seance promises death or forgiveness, a fire rages in a snowstorm, a painter’s final masterpiece inspires betrayal, a child is given away. With twist upon twist, this lush, strange mystery withholds its shocking truth to the very end.

The Opal Dragonfly
Allen & Unwin, 2018; ISBN 9781760293079
September, 1851. Sydney, city of secrets and gossip. Seventeen-year-old Isobel Macleod is determined to save her father because she loves him. But when she dares to trespass in a forbidden male world, she will be plunged into social disgrace. A wave of ill fortune threatens to swallow up her family and their stately home, Rosemount Hall, ‘the finest house in the colony’ on the foreshores of Sydney Harbour. Is Isobel to blame for her family’s fate or does the cause lie further in the past? When Isobel was four, Major Macleod returned from an expedition with two ‘souvenirs’: an Aboriginal girl who became her friend and two opals fashioned into a dragonfly brooch for her mother. When Isobel inherits this ‘unlucky’ heirloom, she wonders if the terrible dreams it summons are a curse or a gift. Now Isobel’s hopes for her future depend on a charming bohemian who encourages her hidden passion to become an artist. Will she now be permanently exiled from her family home? Or will she be transformed into a new self like a magnificent dragonfly emerging into the sunlight? Inspired by Elizabeth Bay House and the other grand villas of Sydney’s Woolloomooloo Hill, The Opal Dragonfly tells the bittersweet story of an ambitious family’s fall from grace and a brave young woman’s struggle to find her true self.