Sanctuary

In the 1930s, in an isolated and beautiful corner of southern Tasmania, a new young wife arrives at her husband's secluded property - Arcadia. Stella, an artist, falls in love with Arcadia's wild, ancient forest. And when an unknown predator strikes, she is saved by an unusual protector...Two generations later, Stella's granddaughter, Sally, and her best friend, Jessica, stumble over Stella's secret life in the forest and find themselves threatened in turn. What starts as a girls' adventurous road trip becomes a hunt for the story of the past, to solve the present and save their future.... 

Each of the four who travel this journey has a story to tell. An environmentalist fights to save the primitive and beautiful Pilbara coast from the careless ravaging of mining conglomerates; a Vietnam War veteran rises above crippling injuries to discover a talent that gains him an international reputation; and an ambitious geologist joins forces with a hard-core businessman to lead the way in the growth of Perth from a sleepy town to a glittering citadel.

Di Morrissey returns to the red earth of the Kimberley with a passionate story of resistance and resilience under its soaring blue skies. After the upheaval which separated Jacqui Bouchard from her beloved son, she has finally settled in Broome, a magical remote town on the northwest coast of Australia. But when a proposed mining development is unveiled, the town begins to tear itself apart. Rifts run deep as friends, families and lovers are faced with a battle that could change their lives irrevocably.

In 1788, Thomas Kendall, a naïve 19-year-old sentenced to transportation for burglary, finds himself bound for Sydney Town and a new life in the wild and lawless land beneath the Southern Cross. Thomas fathers a dynasty that will last more than 200 years. His descendants play their part in the forging of a nation, but greed and prejudice see an irreparable rift in the family which will echo through the generations. It is only at the dawn of the new millennium - as an old journal lays bare a terrible secret - that the family can finally reclaim its honour.... 

Van Diemen's Land was an island of stark contrasts; a harsh penal colony, an English idyll for its landed gentry, and an island so rich in natural resources it was a profiteer's paradise. Its capital Hobart Town had its contrasts too; the wealthy elite in their sandstone mansions, the exploited poor in the notorious slum known as Wapping, and the criminals and villains who haunted the dockside taverns and brothels of Sullivan's Cove.

In 1881, ‘Big Jim’ Durham, an English soldier of fortune and profiteer, ruthlessly creates for Elianne Desmarais, his young French wife, the finest of the great sugar mills of the Southern Queensland cane fields, and names it in her honour. The massive estate becomes a self-sufficient fortress, a cane-consuming monster and home to hundreds of workers, but ‘Elianne’ and its masters, the Durham Family, have dark and distant secrets; secrets that surface in the wildest and most inflammatory of times, the 1960s.

During the darkest days of the Cold War, in the remote wilderness of a South Australian desert, the future of an infant nation is being decided ... without its people's knowledge. A British airbase in the middle of nowhere; an atomic weapons testing ground; an army of raw youth led by powerful, ambitious men - a cocktail for disaster. Such is Maralinga in the spring of 1956.

Three brothers, one death, a fenceline stretching to the horizon. Two brothers meet at the border of their vast cattle properties under the unrelenting sun of outback Queensland. They are at the stockman's grave, a landmark so old, no one can remember who is buried there. But today, the scant shadow it casts was the last hope for their middle brother, Cameron. The Bright family's quiet existence is thrown into grief and anguish. Something had been troubling Cam. Did he lose hope and walk to his death? Because if he didn't, the isolation of the outback leaves few suspects.... 

Dr Isla Fenwick has a life that most modern women of 1933 might envy - her career gives her status, her pedigree adds freedom and her oldest crush, Jovian Mandeville, has reappeared in her life with a marriage proposal. Her life is beginning to feel complete. However, she insists on keeping a private promise she made to her late mother to work at the coalface of medicine in India before committing to life as a dutiful wife.

In a time when desperate people were seizing with both hands the chance for freedom, refugees from more than 70 nations gathered beneath the Southern Cross to forge a new national identity. They came from all over war-torn Europe to the mountains of Australia to help realise one man's dream: the mighty Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme, one of the greatest engineering feats of the 20th century. People of all races and creeds tunnelled through a mountain range to turn the course of a majestic river, trying to put to rest ghosts from the inferno of history: buried memories, unimaginable pain and deadly secrets. 

In 1962 Cindy drops out of college to impulsively marry an Australian grazier, moving from the glamorous world of Palm Springs, California, to an isolated sheep station on the sweeping plains of the Riverina in New South Wales. Cindy's new life at Kingsley Downs station is not what she'd imagined, as she is flung into a strange and challenging world. Natural disasters and the caprices of the wool industry shape her destiny and though she tries hard to fit in, she finds she is always the outsider.

From the mountains to the valleys, from big cities to tiny towns, to the outback and our islands, Di Morrissey knows this country. She's been there. In The Road Back, Di weaves a tale of reconnection and starting over. Journalist Chris Baxter is at a crossroads. Returning with his teenage daughter to his mother's house in the beautiful township of Neverend, Chris hopes to pick up the pieces after his life takes an unexpected turn. Sometimes taking the road back is the start of a journey forward.

Di writes about the Australia she knows, she loves, she’s explored. Rain Music is inspired by her adventures in far north Queensland - its characters, its forgotten history, its modern dilemmas. A brother and sister, Ned and Bella Chisolm, are struggling with a family tragedy that has set them on opposite paths. After Ned takes off to pursue his musical dreams in far north Queensland, he disappears.

Twenty-eight years ago, Charlotte and Samantha Quinn's happy smalltown family life was torn apart by a terrifying attack on their family home. It left their mother dead. It left their father - Pikeville's notorious defense attorney - devastated. And it left the family fractured beyond repair, consumed by secrets from that terrible night. Twenty-eight years later, and Charlie has followed in her father's footsteps to become a lawyer herself. But when violence comes to Pikeville again - and a shocking tragedy leaves the whole town traumatized - Charlie is plunged into a nightmare.

Emma, a nurse and busy mother of three, has always dreamed of having a sister. Michelle, at 46, wonders if it's too late to fall in love and find her birth parents. Sarah, career woman and perfectionist homemaker, struggles to keep up with the Joneses. Bill, 72, feels left behind after the death of his adored wife. Adam can't stop thinking about the father he never had. These five very different people are all connected but separated by secrets from the past. Sisters and Brothers will both break and warm your heart in a way that only best-selling Australian storyteller Fiona Palmer can.