Colleen McCullough

//Colleen McCullough
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  • Book III of Masters of Rome series.  Sulla returns from exile and is installed as dictator of Rome.  Pompey, designating himself 'Magnus' (the Great) is determined at the ripe age of 22, to leapfrog the accepted path of Roman politics by any means necessary.  There is also Spartacus and his doomed slave revolt. Finally, there are Caesar's exploits as a young soldier and advocate, testing and enhancing the talents with which fate destiny has equipped him.  Colleen McCullough took the research for her Rome series so seriously that she and her husband were almost flooded out of the house by reference books. She also worked out how to make a toga by factoring in aspects of basic daily Roman life and proved that most Hollywood representations of this garment are wildly inaccurate.
  • Holloman, Connecticut, 1962. A very rare and lethal toxin, extracted from the blowfish, is stolen from a laboratory at Chubb University. It kills in minutes and leaves no trace behind -  unless a doctor knows what to look for - and worried biochemist Dr. Millie Hunter reports the theft at once to her father, Medical Examiner Dr. Patrick O'Connell. Patrick's cousin, Captain Carmine Delmonico, is therefore quick off the mark when the bodies start to mount up. A sudden death at a dinner party and another at a gala black-tie event seem only to be linked by the poison and Dr. Jim Hunter, Millie's husband and scientist on the brink of greatness. A black man married to a white woman, Dr. Jim has faced scandal and prejudice for most of his life, so what would cause him to risk it all now? Is he being framed for murder, and if so, by whom? Carmine and his team of detectives must navigate the competitive world of academic publishing, fraught with politics and prestige.  The stakes are high: a valuable art collection, a large inheritance, old and upstanding local families, a gold-digging wife, jealous relatives and a young couple's future.
  • Masters of Rome VI. Caesar is in the prime of his life and the height of his powers.  A man of contradictions, he is happily married and at the same time the lover of Cleopatra.  He is a great general but wishes to bring an end to Rome's endless civil and external wars. He is respectful of the Republic and is determined not to be worshipped as a god, but his very greatness attracts dangerous envy.
  • Set in the latter half of the nineteenth century on the New South Wales goldfields. Alexander Kinross is remembered in his native Scotland as a shiftless apprentice and a Godless rebel.  But when he writes to summon his bride, his relatives realise he's made a fortune on the goldfields.  His sixteen year old bride is frightened and repelled by him, yet she marries him and is isolated in wild country in a big house with only Chinese servants for company.  And she has no idea her husband still has a mistress. Kinross sees no reason not to have both women  - he's rich, powerful and has the Midas Touch.  But power costs more than even Kinross can pay.

  • Jane and Elizabeth Bennet of Pride and Prejudice are well-known - but what of their sister Mary, of the staidly religious mind and awful singing voice?  Colleen McCullough imagines a life for Mary, twenty years after the close of Jane Austen's novel.  Each of Mary's sisters is settled in one way or another; Jane is happily married and the mother of many children; Elizabeth has to cope with unwelcome social pre-eminence; Lydia is still enchanted with military officers; and Kitty is a star of the fashionable London salons. When circumstances free Mary from her family obligations she is fired with zeal by the newspaper letters of the mystery man 'Argus' and she resolves to publish a book about the plight of London's poor - a goal which has her plunging from one predicament to another and ultimately to the surprising identity of 'Argus'.
  • Book VII of Masters Of Rome. Brutus and Cassius are dead at Phillippi, leaving two men to inherit the world: Octavian, young, brilliant and sickly-looking - or Mark Antony, a powerful war-lord in his prime.  It seems like no contest.  But Cleopatra, mourning the death of Julius Caesar, is determined to attain world power for her son Caesarion.  She must choose to seduce either Antony or Octavian and makes Antony her choice.  But Antony is first and foremost a Roman and she must first overcome his prejudices.  A compelling chronicle of love, hate, defeat and victory as Antony and Cleopatra challenge Octavian for the world.
  • Set in the United States of the future, Dr. Joshua Christian's work as a clinical psychologist presents him with a bitter tableau of people spiritually impoverished by too much change: political, climatic, idealogical. His deep compassion and personal magnetism have created a devout following among his patients, but living and working in the backwater of a Connecticut town, he yearns to reach out and help on a larger scale. Dr Judith Carriol, a brilliant  senior official from the Department of the Environment is as ambitious and career-oriented as she is Machiavellian. She recognises in Joshua the personification of her desire to influence history. Together the embark on a crusade to regenerate the country's morale by radically changing its peoples' outlook. Judith engineers the plot, Joshua must execute it  and on a tour of the winter-devastated country, he turns the tour into a pilgrimage that touches and renews the despairing hearts of the people.

  • 1965, Holloman, Connecticut, and someone is preying on the innocent. At a prestigious research centre for neurosciences comfortably called 'The Hug', parts of a body are discovered. Lt. Carmine Delmonico of the Holloman Police learns that a string of  horrifying disappearances, each fitting the same modus operandi as the body at The Hug, has been occurring throughout the state.  Then another body is found, again linked to The Hug. As Delmonico delves deeper, it seems everyone at The Hug has something to hide but he is determined to solve this case - even though the killer is a monster who leaves no clues and is always two steps ahead.  A page turner that will keep you in until the very last page.
  • The tale of Helen and Paris, the immortal lovers who doomed two great nations to war.  It is told through the eyes of the main characters: the sensuous and self-indulgent Helen; the equally self-indulgent Prince Paris; the subtle, brilliant Odysseus; the noble Hektor; the sad, elderly King Priam; the tormented warrior-prince Achilles and King Agamemnon, who consents to the unspeakable in order to launch his thousand ships incurring the fury of his wife Klytemnestra. Cover art by Sarah Perkins.