by Di Morrissey
Chris walked with his mother to her car and gave her a kiss on the cheek.
‘See you both on Sunday? Now the house is finished, David and I will be heading off to Italy in a couple of weeks, even if it is slightly out of season.’
‘You’ll have a ball, Mum.’
He watched her car turn out of View Street. All was quiet once more.
In the warmth of the sun, Chris closed his eyes, but he could still see in his mind’s eye the green paddocks dotted with fat cows, the hills rising like protective green pillows, the river running under the bridge. It was a view he’d seen all his life and was forever imprinted on his heart.
With love to Boris, who is always beside me, loving, staunch and caring.
My children, Gabrielle and Nick, and your beautiful children. I am so proud of you both.
Thanks are not enough to my friend and editor, Liz Adams, who is part of my life – 24/7!
To all at Pan Macmillan: Ross Gibb, Samantha Sainsbury, Katie Crawford, Jace Armstrong, Hayley Crandell and Danielle Walker.
Thanks to Ian Robertson, the lawyer with a sense of humour!
Also many thanks to:
Professor Tim Lindsey, Malcolm Smith, Professor of Asian Law and Director of the Centre for Indonesian Law, Islam and Society, at the University of Melbourne. My good friend, Kadek Adi. Also, George Negus and Kirsty Cockburn; Jim Sweeney, Bellingen Museum; Brett Iggulden and Patrick Cairns. My teen muses – Shak and Dana.
Beau Riley, computer whiz, who solves my technology glitches no matter where in the world I am.
Suggested viewing to learn about what happened in Indonesia during the 1965 coup – the Oscar-nominated documentary, The Act of Killing by Joshua Oppenheimer and Christine Cynn.
About Di Morrissey
Di Morrissey is one of the most successful authors Australia has ever produced. She trained as a journalist, working in newspapers, magazines, television and media around the world. Her fascination with different countries; their cultural, political and environmental issues, has been the catalyst for her novels which are all inspired by a particular landscape.
Di is a passionate advocate and activist for many causes. She established The Golden Land Education Foundation to raise funds to build and maintain a primary school, in Burma (Myanmar).
Di has two children, Dr Gabrielle Morrissey Hansen and Dr Nicolas Morrissey, and four grandchildren. Di lives with her partner, Boris Janjic, in the Manning Valley, NSW.
To find out more visit www.dimorrissey.com and www.facebook.com/DiMorrissey and follow her at @di_morrissey on Twitter.
Also by Di Morrissey
Heart of the Dreaming
The Last Rose of Summer
Follow the Morning Star
The Last Mile Home
Tears of the Moon
When the Singing Stops
The Songmaster
Scatter the Stars
Blaze
The Bay
Kimberley Sun
Barra Creek
The Reef
The Valley
Monsoon
The Islands
The Silent Country
The Plantation
The Opal Desert
The Golden Land
The Winter Sea
MORE BESTSELLING FICTION BY DI MORRISSEY
The Winter Sea
Escaping an unhappy marriage and an unsatisfactory job, Cassie Holloway moves to the little NSW coastal town of Whitby Point. Here she meets the Aquino family, whose fishing business was founded by their ancestor, Giuseppe, an immigrant Italian, some ninety years before.
Life for Cassie on the south coast is sweet as she sets up a successful restaurant and falls in love with Giuseppe’s great-grandson Michael. But when the family patriarch dies, a devastating family secret is revealed which threatens to destroy her dreams.
Cassie’s future happiness now rests on her quest for the truth.
The Golden Land
Natalie is a young Gold Coast mother with a loving husband, two small children and a happy lifestyle. While helping her mother move house, she finds a little box containing a Burmese artefact. When Natalie learns its unique history through a letter left by her great-great uncle, it ignites an interest in its country of origin and her uncle’s unfulfilled plans for this curio.
Her investigations collide with her own dramatically changing circumstances and create a catalyst for a moral dilemma that challenges the core of her marriage as she finds herself immersed in two very different golden lands.
The Opal Desert
Kerrie, in her 40s, has just lost her famous sculptor husband who had been the centre of her existence and for whom she made many sacrifices and she now finds her life has lost direction.
Shirley, approaching 80, was betrayed by her lover many years before and has retreated from the world, becoming a recluse living in an underground dugout.
Anna, 19, has a promising athletic career but is torn between the commitment to her sport which could carry her to the Olympics, or enjoying life like other young people.
The friendship that develops between these three women, who meet in the strangely beautiful but desolate landscape of the opal fields, helps them resolve and come to terms with the next stage of their lives.
The Plantation
When Australian Julie Reagan discovers a book written about wild Malaysia in the 1970s, she decides to find out more about the author – her great aunt. Why did her grandmother refuse to speak about her sister who disappeared from the family, 60 years before?
Julie is invited to stay with her cousins who run the plantation founded by her great grandfather in Malaya a hundred years ago, and she decides to visit in the hope of finding clues to this family mystery.
What Julie finds sends her spiralling through generations of loves, deaths, tragedy and the challenges of the present until she discovers her grandmother’s shocking secret.
The Silent Country
TV producer Veronica Anderson travels to the Northern Territory to retrace the journey of an expedition that had set out 50 years earlier to film the outback, but which mysteriously ended in tragedy.
Of the group, led by the eccentric Maxim Topov, few are still alive and they are reluctant to talk about the intriguing events. It is through the help of local NT Park Ranger, Jamie McIntosh, that Veronica begins to piece together the puzzle and discover the answers.
These answers break the silence and change her life.
The Islands
It’s the psychedelic 70s and social conventions are being challenged. When Catherine Moreland from rural Australia goes on her first trip abroad, a handsome American naval officer sweeps her off her feet and she goes to live in the beautiful Hawaiian Islands with her new husband.
At first, the magic and loveliness of the Islands lead Catherine to believe she is living in paradise. However, as she learns more about the Islands, she begins to discover that paradise has a darker side. And when she meets a mystery man of the sea, as though hit by a tsunami, her life is turned upside down and changed forever.
Monsoon
Monsoon is a journey into the hearts and memories of those caught in a certain time in a particular place.
Sandy Donaldson has been working for a volunteer organisation in Vietnam for the past four years. As her contract nears its end, she is reluctant to leave so she invites her oldest friend, Anna, to come for a holiday and discover its beautiful tourist destinations.
Both girls have unexplored links to this country. Sandy’s father is a Vietnam vet and Anna’s mother was a Vietnamese boat person.
During their travels, they meet Tom, an old Australian journalist who covered the war and plans to report on the 40th anniversary of the Battle of Long Tan. It is Tom who tries to persuade Sandy’s father to return t
o Long Tan and settle the ghosts that have haunted him for 40 years, and suggests that Anna should delve into her mother’s past.
But the girls are reluctant, swept up in their own concerns, relationships, and a business deal that has the potential to go horribly wrong. However, it is the near-blind Buddhist nun living alone in the pagoda atop one of the karsts in Halong Bay who might hold the key.
The Valley
FROM AUSTRALIA’S QUEEN OF FICTION COMES A PAGE-TURNING STORY OF FAMILY SECRETS AND LIES . . .
The valley is nestled between rugged peaks, divided by a magnificent river. Within its peaceful green contours are held the secrets of generations of tribes, families and loners who have come under its spell.
But some secrets are never shared, never told.
Until one woman returns and begins asking questions . . . and discovers the story of a forgotten valley pioneer whose life becomes entwined with hers. But in looking into her own family’s history she uncovers more than she ever expected – and what her mother hoped would always remain a secret . . .
The Reef
On a small coral cay on the Great Barrier Reef two communities come together in an uneasy alliance: a tourist resort and a scientific research station.
At first glance, the island is a sexy resort, a naturalist’s dream, a diver’s delight. But the island holds secrets and dangers as Jennifer Towse soon discovers.
When world-famous marine biologist Isobel Belitas arrives, Jennifer learns to see the world – above and below the sea – very differently. Isobel also teaches her to come to terms with her obsessive mother, as well as her disintegrating marriage.
But no one, not even investigative journalist Tony Adams, could have prepared Jennifer for the stunning revelations of what is really happening on this island paradise . . .
Barra Creek
In the wild Gulf country of northwestern Queensland, there’s a cattle station – Barra Creek – on a tributary of the crocodile-infested Norman River.
It’s 1963 and Sally Mitchell, the well-bred daughter of a wealthy New Zealand sheep farmer, is on her way to England with her friend Pru. When the young women stop over in Sydney their plans go awry. Sally impulsively takes a job as a governess at Barra Creek, and when the mail plane that flew her there takes off she finds herself left in a different world. One dominated by the overpowering John Monroe and his strict and proper wife Lorna.
Here Sally’s life changes forever. The challenges of coping with her three young charges, wild stockman, the heat and the Wet, brumby musters and cattle rushes all pale beside a great passion, a great loss and a gruesome death.
Only Lorna knows the truth of the death and of a terrible injustice. Now, in 2003, she searches for the former governess to finally set things right and share her horrific secret.
Kimberley Sun
The remote town of Broome, the desert and the Kimberley coast – Australia’s last frontier and a land of ancient beauty – are the backdrop for Kimberley Sun, the sequel to Di Morrissey’s international bestseller, Tears of the Moon.
Lily Barton, now 53, is beautiful, adventurous and looking for a life change. Sami, her daughter, is driving alone through the outback to finally, reluctantly confront her family roots. Together they are swept into a world where legends, myths and reality converge, as they find that everyone they meet has a story to tell. From Farouz, the son of an Afghan camel driver, Bobby, the Chinese-Aboriginal man who is tangled in the murder of a German tourist, to Biddy, the survivor from Captain Tyndall and Olivia’s era . . . and who is the mysterious artist hiding in the desert?
All have a secret and a story to share as each finds their place under the Kimberley sun . . .
The Bay
The Bay is a beautiful and peaceful town on the Australian east coast; a melting pot of city escapees, alternative lifestylers, feral dropouts, lost souls, backpackers, and men and women in search of love and a new sense of identity.
When Sydney corporate wife Holly Jamieson turns forty-five she shocks her husband by buying an old house in The Bay with plans to transform it into a charming B & B. What began as a gesture of independence changes her life. Holly soon discovers that beneath its tranquil surface, The Bay is a whirlpool of passions and conflict. It was once a whaling town, then a sleepy resort that became trendy, and now developers are moving in for the kill. Holly, her family, and an unusual band of new friends are in the battle lines – and not always on the same side.
This is a story of contemporary issues, but the ghosts of the past haven’t left town. The Bay captures the atmosphere of a unique place and its people so you can feel that you are there.
The Bay is a place to change your life.
Blaze
ALI GRUBER, 28, is slick, smart, ambitious. She is determined to be editor of the New York edition of Blaze, the world’s most popular magazine. But fate intervenes, taking Ali back to the closely guarded secret of her Australian childhood.
NINA JANSOUS, 60, is the founder of the internationally famous Blaze. Croatian-born and Australian-raised, the elegant Nina is haunted by memories of the past. From New York to Sydney, Paris to Zagreb, Nina searches for the one person who can make her life complete.
LARISSA KELLY, 35, has everything – a prestigious publishing career and a loving man. But can the relationship survive when he’s a stockbroker in New York’s Greenwich Village, and she’s been posted to Blaze’s new magazine in Sydney, trying to soothe the staff reeling from the arrival of Ali, their new ruthless editor?
MICHE BANNISTER, 22, wants to be a journalist and follow in her late mother’s footsteps. In Paris, Miche infiltrates the champagne world of sixteen-year-old supermodel Jessica Shaw and finds, beyond the haute couture, a murky world of designer drugs and sexual abuse. And should she reveal what she uncovers when faced with her mother’s nemesis? It’s a hard choice between ethics and a sensational story that could make her name.
BLAZE is an intimate look at four women coping with their private and public lives in the world of magazines. A world where scheming and fox cunning seem to beat skill and talent, where sexism and ageism in office politics label women over thirty over the hill.
Absorbing. Biting. Funny. Real. BLAZE doesn’t pull punches.
Scatter the Stars
Larrikin Australian actor Randy Storm had it all. Swept up by Hollywood after starring in a film set in Papua New Guinea, he had the looks, charm and talent – as well as the love of an exotic woman – to take on the world.
But that was the 1950s. In the ’90s he’s forgotten, burned out after a life of movie star excess and wild living.
When TV producer Michael Matthews bumps into the once great Randy Storm, he is surprised to find a man who is at peace with himself and his world. Both he and researcher Janie Callendar set out to discover the source of this inner peace. One person not surprised by Randy’s contentment is the woman who has stuck by him through the highs and the lows: his agent, Ariel Margoles. Ariel has never given up the dream of Randy making a comeback, so when she is called by Australia’s world acclaimed film director Patricia Jordan who is making the hottest Hollywood film of the year - Ariel sees the chance for Randy to be a star once more.
But just as he is about to reach his pinnacle, a secret from his past threatens to bring down his greatest triumph . . .
Scatter the Stars is a story of glamour, greed, loss and one man’s life that charts the path for all of us.
The Songmaster
A timely and profound novel that entrances and entertains.
In Melbourne, a baby girl is found abandoned in the Victorian Art Gallery. She is wrapped in a shawl decorated with a motif that links her to ancient rock paintings in the Kimberley . . .
In Los Angeles, a movie producer’s dying daughter is haunted by nightmares after visiting the Kimberley . . .
And it is to the Kimberley that ex-nun
Beth Van Horton brings a disparate group of travellers whose lives will be changed forever.
The Kimberley – a land that cradles Australia’s ancient treasures – is also home to a people whose powerful secrets could unlock the future for modern mankind.
When the Singing Stops
The journey that changes her life . . .
A young Australian woman leaves Sydney for a new world . . . Guyana, South America.
Captivated by Guyana’s wild, unspoilt beauty, Madison Wright joins the native Amerindians struggling to preserve their culture against corporate exploitation. But her new-found commitment soon plunges Madison into a mire of murder, drug smuggling and political corruption. And finally, an unexpected love that pits her heart against her beliefs.
From Sydney’s sparkling harbour to the lush rainforests of South America, When the Singing Stops is a triumph of storytelling.
Tears of the Moon
Broome, Australia 1893
In the wild passionate heyday of the pearling industry, and when young English bride Olivia Hennessy meets the dashing pearling master, Captain Tyndall, their lives are destined to be linked by the mysterious power of the pearl.
Sydney 1995
Lily Barton embarks on a search for her family roots which leads her to Broome. But her quest for identity reveals more than she could have ever imagined . . .
Tears of the Moon is the spellbinding bestseller from Australia’s most popular female novelist.
The Last Mile Home
It is 1953 in a small Australian country town, a time of postwar prosperity and hope.
