Nevil Shute’s novel, A Town Like Alice (originally published 1950), leads its readers through the years before, during, and after WWII on both the British home front and the colonial outposts of British Malaya. Eventually, readers wander as a far as Queensland, Australia in this classically mid-century novel about a resourceful (we might call her entrepreneurial in the 21st century) young woman (Jean Paget) whose grit and good sense make her a natural leader and a wildly likeable character.