Colleen McCullough

"The Thorn Birds is a robust, romantic saga of a singular family, the Clearys. It begins in the early part of the 20th century, when Paddy Cleary moves his wife, Fiona, and their seven children to Drogheda, the vast Australian sheep station owned by his autocratic and childless older sister; and it ends more than half a century later, when the only survivor of the third generation, the brilliant actress Justine O'Neill, sets a course of life and love...

Not since The Thorn Birds has Colleen McCullough written a novel of such broad appeal about a family and the Australian experience. When Alexander Kinross -- remembered in his native Scotland only as a shiftless boilermaker's apprentice and godless rebel -- summons his bride Elizabeth Drummond to Australia, his Scottish relatives realize that Kinross has made a fortune in the goldfields and is now a man to be reckoned with. The intimacies of marriage...

In Australia's Blue Mountains in the early 1900s, Missy Wright acquires spunk, hope, and her rightful inheritance.