New Zealand author Emily Perkins’ fierce novel, Lioness, is about what lies beneath the polished veneer of a woman whose charmed life is beginning to unravel.

Therese Thorne has a successful business, a rich older husband who adores her, and four spoilt adult stepchildren who do not. Her image is as carefully curated as one of her popular homewares stores, but time and privilege have smoothed away so many of her rough edges that there’s not much of the real Therese left. When her husband becomes embroiled in a corruption scandal and their comfortable world starts to crumble around them, Therese is forced to confront how much of her self she’s had to sacrifice for a lifestyle that’s rapidly revealing itself to be a gilded cage.

As her rich, influential friends fall away – anxious about the taint of association with the fallen golden couple – Therese develops a friendship with her charismatic downstairs neighbour, Claire. It’s not long before she is seduced by Claire’s unconventional lifestyle, appetite for life, and by Claire herself.

Written with elegance and tightly coiled restraint, Lioness is a magnificent portrait of female rage and what happens when women liberate themselves from the rules that society has imposed upon them.