‘A lady dancer, a comedienne, and a comic singer. And the head of my own travelling troupe. The Ada Delroy Company, lately extinct.‘

Meet Ada. Losing her looks but not her touch, waving a morphia cocktail and holding forth from her bed, she’s still got some silks, sequins, a scrapbook, and the story of her life on the stage and the road. And what a life.

‘I was a household name. I had a diamond pendant near as big as an emu egg off the Maharajah of What’s-His-Name (it’ll come to me). They named a racehorse after me, and a pigeon and a potato soup on an Orient steamship. Newspaper reporters around the globe knew me as the Premier Serpentine Dancer Of the World, the inventor of the form, if you don’t count its actual inventor.’

Ada was world famous when clairvoyants, cockatoo acts and strongmen toured the world and performed for everyone from royalty to riotous miners and larrikins. But underneath the rouge, the glorious glamour and cheeky wit was the reality of life for a girl who couldn’t help being both fabulous and disreputable.

Beautifully imagined and lovingly researched, Ada comes to life in genuine, vivid detail. Everyone in this novel was a real person and we’ve got the photos to prove it. As for the story, well, you’ll want to hear Ada tell it.