Today is the publication date of The Fishmonger And The Pastry Chef, my new picture book with the wonderful illustrator Cheryl Orsini. Published by Little Hare (Hardie Grant Books), and partly inspired by my family history in the beautiful French Basque seaside town of Biarritz, it’s a very special book indeed. I can’t begin to say how much I adore the gorgeous visual world that Cheryl created around my text, weaving in her own beautiful, engaging threads of imagination and warmth. It’s been pure joy to work with her as co-creator!
Many thanks to our agent, Margaret Connolly, our publisher, Chren Byng, editor Johanna Gogos, and all the excellent team at Little Hare and Hardie Grant children’s publishing for your belief in this book and for helping to make it the most beautiful production ever.
Thanks also to the reviewers and booksellers who even in advance of publication have taken our book to their hearts–it is hugely appreciated! And here’s hoping The Fishmonger And The Pastry Chef will find its way into many, many hands and hearts, all over the country.
And if you’re in Sydney, do come and celebrate the launch of The Fishmonger And The Pastry Chef with us on Saturday November 29 at 2pm, at Gleebooks (Glebe). There will be sweet treats, stories and crafty things! RSVP to rachel@gleebooks.com.au
Lovely double celebration last night in beautiful bookshop, Reader’s Companion in Armidale, for both In The Paris Fashion and The Fishmonger and the Pastry Chef!
It’s publication day for In The Paris Fashion, my third adult novel under the name of Sophie Beaumont, and I couldn’t be more excited! So many lovely readers enjoyed the previous novels, A Secret Garden in Paris (2024) and The Paris Cooking School (2023) and I hope very much you’ll love this one too!
This novel, which tells a very contemporary story but reaches back into the past and the extraordinarily creative years of the fashion world in the between-wars years in Paris, is very close to my heart as it was partly inspired by a precious family legacy in the form of the experiences of my beautiful paternal grandmother Marie-Louise during her unconventional provincial childhood and amazing time in Paris as a young fashion illustrator and aspiring artist in the Paris of the late 1920’s and early 1930’s. Her handwritten notebook from the 1970’s, telling those stories, was transcribed by one of my sisters recently and proved very inspirational. Other inspirations come in the form of the fascinating world of ‘brocante’ or vintage/antique trading; the history of the silk trade in France, and of course the extraordinary place of Paris in the world of haute couture.
In my many visits to Paris over the years, including this year, I have visited the locations in the novel, such as the Avenue de Montaigne with its rows of designer showrooms; the fabric district in Montmartre, with its fascinating stores; and the famous art school, l’Académie de la Grande Chaumière. I’ll be profiling these and many other locations in the novel on a special page on this blog–watch this space!
I’d like to acknowledge the many people who have made this book such a gorgeous reality: my agent, Margaret Connolly; my publisher, Brigid Mullane and all the fantastic Ultimo Press team, for making this book the very best it could be, both editorially and in design and production; and to Cheryl Orsini for the gorgeous cover illustration and map. Special thanks to my sisters: Gabrielle, who walked many of the Paris settings with me; Camille and Beatrice, whose inside knowledge of the brocante scene helped flesh out Isabelle’s background; and Dominique, whose work on transcribing our grandmother’s handwritten notebook was of such help in evoking the atmosphere of late 1920’s Paris. Many thanks also to my niece Emilie-Marie, for showing me in real life what work at a couture school consists of. And to all my beautiful family in Australia, France and the UK, I am so very grateful for your loving support and encouragement, as always.
So last Friday night, this totally astonishing, absolutely wonderful thing happened: in a lovely ceremony at the State Library, Bold Ben Hall was announced as the winner of the Young People’s History Prize in the 2025 NSW History Awards!
I feel so delighted, honoured, grateful and absolutely amazed…still pinching myself!
Thank you so much to the wonderful judges, to the State Library, to my fantastic publisher Walker Books Australia, my lovely agent Margaret Connolly, and my darling family and friends who came to celebrate this exciting evening with me!
Last week, I did a wonderful tour of Sydney bookshops with Lorena Carrington, fabulous illustrator and co-creator of our picture book The Giant. On foot, by train and by bus, we went to several of Sydney’s best bookshops, including, in the CBD, Abbeys, Kinokuniya, and Dymocks George St, plus Harry Hartog in Bondi Junction, Gleebooks in Glebe and Berkelouw in Leichhardt. Everywhere we received a warm welcome, and the culmination was a wonderful event for the book at the fabulous bookshop Better Read than Dead in Newtown, where the fantastic author Ursula Dubosarsky launched it into the world, our lovely publisher Anna Solding of MidnightSun Publishing attended, coming all the way from Adelaide, and a warm supportive crowd came to share the celebration with us! It was all so much fun and we are so grateful for all the warm support of booksellers, readers, and fellow creators for our gentle Giant!
Today, August 1, is the official publication day for The Giant, my new picture book with the wonderful illustrator, Lorena Carrington, and we are so thrilled! Published by MidnightSun Publishing, The Giant is a fable about, yes, a giant! He wakes from a long sleep and happily walks down the mountain to find his old friends in the town–but alas, so much time has passed since he went to sleep that nobody remembers him and everyone runs away in fear–everyone, that is, except for–well, read the book to find out!
The Giant is my second picture-book collaboration with Lorena, after Satin (MidnightSun Publishing, 2023), which was awarded a Notable Books citation in the 2024 Children’s Book Council Book of the Year Awards. And as with Satin, creating The Giant was an absolute blast of a book to create together with our lovely publisher Anna Solding and her team at MidnightSun Publishing.
To celebrate the book’s publication, Lorena and I have written a bit about how it all came about. Hope you enjoy reading about it–and enjoy reading the book, too!
From Sophie:
The idea for the story of The Giant came into my head one day when I was walking up the road on a sunny but cold winter morning. He just arrived without warning; one minute I was strolling along, just enjoying the walk, the next minute I had stopped abruptly, seeing him so clearly, waking up, yawning and stretching after sleeping in his cave for a very, very long time.
As a child, I had read old stories where great heroes slept for centuries in caves but might wake up one day if they were needed to fight battles. But I knew my giant wasn’t about fighting battles, he was about finding his friends. And I could imagine his excitement as he went out into the sunshine, filled with joy as he thought he could see his friends again. And then his sadness as he realised nobody remembered him…I hurried home then so I could write his story down and find out what happened next to this gentle giant whose tears could make a river rise.
It was wonderful to write it and even more wonderful and thrilling to see the Giant and his world come to life in Lorena’s magical illustrations!
on left, part of the original first draft in my notebook, on right the finished draft on the computer
From Lorena:
I loved Sophie’s gentle giant from the first time I read her story, and I could picture him immediately in my mind. He is made up completely from elements of nature: moss, stick, leaves, little bits and pieces you might find out walking, so I like think of him as being real part of the landscape that he’s in. In fact, most of the illustrations in this book are made with photographs of nature montaged together, along with paper collage, and a little bit of drawing.
I also knew right from the start that I wanted the illustrations to be full of colour. Set over a full day, from sunrise to after dark, the colours change according to the time of day. If you look closely you can see I’ve used photographs of different landscapes to make up landscapes in the giant’s world, and also added some cut paper, little bits of drawings, and added little interesting things here and there. Look out for the drawing of the giant in the book, and see if the scene repeats itself in a different way later in the book. Can you find versions of the birds and the butterfly from the page borders too?
pages showing the changing of the light over the course of the book…contrasts: the Giant ‘in an old book’ and ‘in real life’...
The Giant, by Sophie Masson and Lorena Carrington, published by MidnightSun Publishing, August 1, 2025. ISBN 9781922858658. Available in all good bookshops around Australia! You can read a few fabulous early reviews here, here and here.
I’m delighted to say that I was interviewed by fellow writer Brenton Cullen on his blog, about Bold Ben Hall, research, writing about the past, and quite a few other things. Really enjoyed the interview, hope you do so too!
Here’s a short extract:
1. Congratulations on your latest fantastic historical novel Bold Ben Hall! What prompted you to write this book?
SM: Thank you, Brenton! Ever since I was a kid I have always been fascinated by the bushranger era, and the larger than life characters who inhabited it, especially those with an interesting backstory, like Ned Kelly (who features in two of my earlier novels, The Hunt for Ned Kelly and Ned Kelly’s Secret) and Ben Hall.
Both men were not ‘common criminals’ but complex figures with both ‘the dark and the bright’ in them (to quote something Ned Kelly once said). And it struck me that I could tell the story of Ben Hall in a way that would highlight that, through the differing viewpoints of two young people of his time.
So excited to be sharing this announcement! My new adult novel, In The Paris Fashion, (written under the name of Sophie Beaumont), will be published by Ultimo Press in November!
Here’s the publisher’s announcement:
Ultimo Press are thrilled to be publishing In the Paris Fashion by Sophie Masson!
It’s a mystery that has passed into fashion legend: the perfect evening gown that was to be created by couture star Elisabeth Fontaine before her tragic death in 1930. Its design, a closely guarded secret, has never been found …
Just like Sophie’s previous novels, (The Paris Cooking School and A Secret Garden in Paris) In the Paris Fashion is utterly compelling, intriguing and romantic and this time it’s set against a background of timeless French fashion. J’adore!
Sophie says: ‘I wanted to tell a great story against the fascinating background of fashion, both contemporary and vintage, and to plunge the reader into a world of intrigue set around the enduring appeal of a legendary lost dress and what it means.’
Publisher, Brigid Mullane, says: ‘Say bonjour to your next escape: In the Paris Fashion is a heartwarming story of friendship, romance and stunning Parisian style – perfect for anyone who’s ever longed for a rendezvous in the City of Light.’
In the Paris Fashion will be published in November 2025
This is a very special novel whose inspiration is very close to my heart (and my family history). More on that soon, but right now, it’s celebration time!
I had a number of excellent book events in March: on March 12, a short talk at the State Library of NSW for the Society of Women Writers (NSW branch), where I focussed on my joint French and Australian influences, via my two most recent books, Bold Ben Hall and A Secret Garden in Paris; on March 13, two book events in Goulburn Library–a storytime event in the morning, around Satin and Cockadoodledoo, read to both children and their families and people from a local nursing home, and an event centred around my Sophie Beaumont adult novels, The Paris Cooking School and A Secret Garden in Paris, in the evening. On March 29, I did a book signing for Bold Ben Hall at Collins Booksellers in Armidale, and on March 30 I was at the fabulous Seasons of New England Expo, spruiking my books and chatting with readers and fellow attendees! Here are a few pics from the various events.
Yoohoo! It’s the publication day today of Bold Ben Hall, my middle-grade novel about the famous/infamous bushranger, as seen through the eyes of Lily Jordan and Sam Turner, two (fictional) young people of his time. Published by Walker Books Australia as the launch title in their new Our History series, it was an absolutely engrossing novel to write, and I hope readers will find it similarly engrossing!
In this novel, I wanted to present Ben Hall’s story in a way which reflects the very different perspectives through which people of the time saw him and his arch-enemy Sir Frederick Pottinger. But it also invites you, the reader today, to make up your own mind, like Lily and Sam try to—who’s the hero, who’s the villain, or do they each have a bit of both?
My main characters Lily, Sam and their families and friends are fictional, but several of the people who appear in this novel are real historical figures, and I have based their descriptions and doings on documents and sources of the time. These historical figures include not only Hall and Pottinger, of course, but also the members of Hall’s gang, Mickey Burke and the three Johnnies—Gilbert, Vane and O’Meally—as well as the landlords of the Canowindra Hotel, Billy and Rose Robinson, and French-born Forbes businessmen Auguste Nicolas and Joseph-Bernard Reymond. As well as doing a lot of research in books and online, I visited Canowindra, Carcoar, Eugowra and Escort Rock (where Frank Gardiner and his gang pulled off the famous gold raid) Bathurst, Forbes (including Ben Hall’s grave) and the surrounding countryside to get a feel for ‘Ben Hall country’, which proved to be both interesting and inspirational. I particularly want to acknowledge the kind help and useful information I received from staff at the Forbes Library and Forbes Visitor Centre, as well as the archivists of the Forbes Family History Group, which helped me to build an even fuller picture of Ben Hall and his times. Later, a visit to the fascinating Cobb and Co Museum in Toowoomba, Queensland, greatly helped in fleshing out the coaching background.
Feathers of the Firebird 