Goddess

‘Scenes sparkle with period details and sensory impressions: all spectacle and shimmer, all gesture and pose, Baroque mask and mirror and role-play. Gardiner does this very well.

And her goddess fascinates.’

– Nancy Kline in the New York Times

‘I wholeheartedly recommend this book as the most exquisitely rendered historical novel I have read in years.’

– Historical Novel Society

‘An engaging and skilfully told tale of a singular character.’

– Kerryn Goldsworthy in Sydney Morning Herald/The Age

‘Witty, intelligent and wry.’

– Author Kate Forsyth

The Sultan’s Eyes

‘Gardiner’s second book for Isabella ends exactly the way I wanted it to – full of wide, open spaces and endless possibility – which is just what I had hoped for my favourite Adventurer & Philosopher. We’d been with her through the fear and heartache of ‘Act of Faith’, and in ‘The Sultan’s Eyes’ we see what those trying years have moulded her into – this brave and cunning young woman who is loyal to a fault and exactly the kind of heroine I want all girls to be reading.’

– AlphaReader

‘This is the way I think historical fiction should be written.’

– Author Rosanne Hawke

Act of Faith
‘It reads like a boys’ own adventure with an enjoyably feminist twist. Melbourne writer Kelly Gardiner is to be congratulated for writing a thoroughly researched page-turner.’
– Sunday Telegraph & Herald Sun

Read more reviews of Act of Faith here.

Swashbuckler trilogy
‘This exciting pirate adventure … introduces a fiesty young heroine called Lily Swann… Ocean Without End is a rollicking, action packed yarn sure to captivate young readers.’
– New Zealand Herald

‘All the romance of the exotic, in the great Victorian tradition of swashbuckling adventure, is here writ large… There must still be room in a curriculum where often literature is bent to pedagogic and ideological ends, to revel in an adventure of ‘otherness’, to weave a tale about an exotic past replete with characters both eccentric and mysterious.’
–  Talespinner(NZ)/Reading Time (Aust)