Showing results by author "Morris West" in All Categories

Winter, 1945. The Second World War is over, but it is a time of armistice, not peace. Austria is grieving its defeat and the loss of a generation of men; it is a land without leaders. To men like Major Mark Hanlon, Occupation Commander of the alpine town of Bad Quellenberg, falls the task of destroying the legacy of the Nazis once and for all. When his driver is murdered by an Austrian soldier, Hanlon is determined to bring the man to justice. But investigating the crime proves difficult in a community where nearly everyone has something to hide.  

On Bryan Cavanagh's birthday, a sealed letter from Rome arrives, bearing the arms of the ancient house of the Farnese di Mongrifone. Affectionate, even imperious, it is a summons from the woman he loved - and lost - in the turbulent, opportunistic world of postwar Europe.

In an impoverished village in southern Italy, the enigmatic life and mysterious death of Giacomo Nerone has inspired talk of sainthood. Father Blaise Meredith, a dying English priest, is sent by the Vatican to investigate. As he tries to untangle the web of facts, rumours and outright lies that surround Nerone, we are reminded how the power of goodness ultimately prevails over despair.

This is the story of Kiril Lakota, a cardinal who reluctantly steps out from behind the Iron Curtain to lead the Catholic Church and to grapple with the many issues facing the contemporary world. The pope is dead, and the corridors of the Vatican hum with intrigue as cardinals gather to elect his successor. The result is a surprise: the new pope is the youngest of them all - a bearded Ukrainian. The Shoes of the Fisherman is the moving story of Kiril I, recently released from 17 years in Siberian labour camps and haunted by his past.

Pope Gregory XVII has spent a lifetime quietly serving the church he loves - until he announces a prophecy so alarming that it threatens to tear the Vatican apart. Terrified, the Vatican cardinals imprison him in a monastery. Is he mad, as they believe, or is it all an elaborate plot? An old friend of the pope sets out on a risky quest to find out. On the way, he discovers the power of love and faith, while terrorists and politicians use every deadly and unholy means to stop him.

At high noon on a hot summer’s day, a beautiful young woman shoots the mayor dead. So begins a story of passion and betrayal in a quiet Tuscan village, leading to a sensational trial. The defence team, headed by the brilliant but unhappy Carlo Rienzi, uncovers a sinister conspiracy of silence that threatens to split the community. Can Carlo persuade the judge to grant clemency in what appears to be an open-and-shut case? Can the law intervene in the brutal tradition of vendetta?  

Set in pre-World War I Europe, The World Is Made of Glass is a powerful novel of love, sexual obsession, murder and guilt. A cryptic and mysterious case history appears in the autobiography of pioneering Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung: ‘A lady came to my office. She refused to give her name. What she had to communicate to me was a confession. Some 20 years ago, she had committed a murder.’ Jung’s encounter with the woman had an explosive effect on him and brought him very close to total breakdown.

Mick McCreary is an oilman out of a job. His only possessions are a plane ticket to Singapore, a month's pay in Indonesian rupiahs and the luck of the Irish. When the mysterious Mr Rubensohn approaches him with the offer of a breathtaking salary for a drilling operation on a remote island - no questions asked - he thinks that luck is running with him once more. But then he meets the beautiful Lisette, and within 24 hours he is involved in murder, intrigue and an international fraud of frightening proportions. 

A fast-paced tale of intrigue and murder in the international art world. When the daughter of an old Florentine family dies, she leaves a bequest to her lover Max Mather, an American art historian who has been managing the family's rare art collection. Mather is left with two priceless artworks by the great Renaissance master Raphael - without the family's knowledge. As Mather contrives to have the artworks discovered at auction in New York, big-time collectors, dealers and auctioneers are drawn into his game.

As a young and outspoken priest, Luca Rossini was brutally tortured in an Argentine military prison, and then nursed back to health by the beautiful Isabel. Exiled to Rome to avoid scandal, Rossini becomes a cardinal and the pope's confidante. He is admired and feared by his colleagues, for he understands the Church and speaks frankly. When the pope becomes gravely ill and a successor must be chosen, Rossini takes a central role. In the midst of the political intrigue that surrounds the selection of a new pope, Isabel arrives in Rome - along with Rossini's daughter.

Twenty chests of minted Spanish gold in a sunken galleon - this is the lure that brings historian Renn Lundigan to a tiny island off Australia's Great Barrier Reef. Renn enlists islander Johnny Akimoto to teach him scuba diving but soon realises there's a far greater danger in the reef than the sharks. Gambling den owner Manny Mannix has followed him to the island, and now he threatens not only Renn and Johnny but also the beautiful young scientist Pat Mitchell.  

Lance Dillon is owner of a new cattle station on the southern fringe of Australia's Arnhem Land. When an aboriginal hunting party targets Dillon's prize bull for a ritual killing and then spears Dillon in the shoulder, it's clear they want him off their traditional land. Under the merciless rays of the burning sun, the wounded Dillon flees into the bush, with expert tracker Mundaru in hot pursuit. Dillon's city-born wife, Mary, and handsome local policeman Neil Adams set out to search for her husband.

Charles Parnell Cassidy is a powerful politician. Martin Gregory is his disenchanted protégé, who, having married Cassidy's daughter and become a success on his own terms, scorns his father-in-law. When the terminally ill Cassidy arrives in London to die, he makes Gregory the executor of his will and sets a complex trap by offering him the keys to a vast empire of wealth and corruption, spanning Australia and Southeast Asia.

An Italian general is found dead in his apartment. Next to his body is a small card inscribed with a salamander in a bed of flames. Is it suicide or murder? Dante Matucci, a captain in the Italian secret service, begins an investigation that leads him into a maze of political violence and intrigue. He meets the general’s former mistress, Lili Anders, and embarks on a dangerous affair with the beautiful onetime spy.

In a valley deep in the highlands of New Guinea lives a small colony of Europeans. One of them is Kurt Sonderfield, a doctor with a shady past who will stop at nothing to get what he wants. N’Daria is a hauntingly beautiful native girl whom Sonderfield has trained in the art of seduction. Kumo is a young sorcerer who has fallen under Sonderfield’s sway. Only two dare oppose Sonderfield: the old French missionary Père Louis, and Gerda, the wife Sonderfield has betrayed. 

Autumn 1990. The world is teetering on the edge of war in the Gulf, Germany is reunited and a crumbling USSR stares ruin in the face. In Japan, a group of powerful men and women gather to create a rescue plan that will bring all three countries together for the first time in 50 years. Polyglot international publisher Gill Langton is mediator-in-chief. Treading the highest wire of global power-broking, he alone can balance politics with intrigue, manoeuvre with counter-manoeuvre. But his love for the beautiful, enigmatic Martha could bring it all tumbling down. 

A journalist who uncovers a story which will overthrow a corrupt Italian politician but things become complicated when he falls in love with the politician's wife. Richard Ashley is a journalist who cares about the truth, and he's about to break the greatest story of his career. Italy's ruling clique is rotten to the core. A scandal centred around Vittorio, Duke of Orgagna, points to a web of corruption and deceit emanating from his estate in the south. But Ashley finds that the truth is not all it seems when he falls in love with Orgagna's wife.

Paul Desmond admires his close friend George Harlequin for his impeccable European breeding. Head of a prestigious Swiss bank, Harlequin belongs to a vanishing class of gentlemen whose handshake is their bond. Then their gilded world is blown apart. A computer printout identifies the Harlequin et Cie bank as the target of a gigantic takeover. The mastermind is Basil Yanko, a ruthless financial genius whose instruments are fraud, blackmail and terror. As the conflict moves from Zurich to London, New York and Mexico, Harlequin must become a 'villain by necessity'.