Based on an incredible true story, Prize Women is a profoundly moving novel that sheds light on a scandalous moment in history.

It's the 1920s, a time of unparalleled excess.
But for the rich to party, the poor must starve . . .

Into the city arrives pregnant runaway Lily di Marco.
She has nothing – and expects nothing.
But soon she will find herself in a towering mansion just streets away.
Confidante to, and best friends with, its glamorous owner Mae Thebolt.

Until the competition.

A childless millionaire leaves his fortune to the woman
who will have the most babies over ten years.
Is it an eccentric contest, or a horrible joke played by a rich man on the poorest women of the city?

Either way, it will tear Lily and Mae’s friendship - and their lives - to pieces . . .

Margaretha van Hulsteyn (also known as Scrappy) is the daughter of respected Pretoria attorney Sir Willem van Hulsteyn, and she's an aspiring actress. While studying in London after the Great War, Scrappy changes her name to Marda Vanne and enters into a relationship with one of the foremost actresses of her day, Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies.

However, on a visit to her parents in the Union of South Africa, Marda meets Hans Strydom, an attorney and uncompromising radical politician with the soubriquet ‘The Lion of the North’. Their meeting changes the course of her life, at least temporarily… Strydom went on to become a principal progenitor of the harshest discriminatory legislation which endured for decades until his nephew, President FW de Klerk, in a volte-face, dismantled the laws of apartheid.

A work of biographical fiction, The Lion & The Thespian is based on the true story of the marriage of Hans Strydom, prime minister of South Africa from 1954 to 1958, to the actress Marda Vanne. Veteran author David Bloomberg (former executive mayor of Cape Town, and founder of Metropolitan Life), following extensive reading and research, has adhered faithfully to the chronology of the lives of the main protagonists, their personalities and the historical facts with which they were associated. Creative license has allowed Bloomberg to recreate appropriate scenes and dialogue, complemented by reported sources and recorded speeches.

Lucy is forty-two when it hits: the stunning realization that her life went off-track years before and never regained its footing. She hardly noticed at the time, too busy raising three kids and navigating the ups and downs of marriage to an admittedly adoring husband. She loves her family dearly, yet she can't escape the nagging sense that her life doesn't match the dreams of her youth. Further complicating matters is the reappearance of Matthew, her first love and the father of her first child. In a fit of midlife rebellion, she rashly agrees to a rendezvous with Matthew in Las Vegas, never suspecting that her illicit vacation will force her to confront another long-buried secret. In Vegas, Lucy must reexamine each of her life choices, her ideas of friendship and love, even the truth and power of her own sexuality. Sure to ring familiar with women of "a certain age," this novel of rediscovery is humorous and poignant, an irreverent portrait of one woman's quest for happiness.