Showing results by author "Mary-Anne O'Connor" in All Categories

A fight for love and freedom in a harsh land...will the stakes prove too high? From the emerald hills of Ireland to a wild colonial land comes an epic story of love, brotherhood and the fight for liberty. 1851: After the death of her father, young Eve Richards is destitute. Her struggle to survive sees her deported in chains to the colony of New South Wales, penniless and alone. But here in this strange new world fortune smiles on the spirited, clever Eve in the shape of a respectable job offer that will lead to a quiet, secure life.

It's 1909 and Mary Richards has worked hard to gain an education and become a teacher in her close-knit, picturesque village in the Cotswolds, but not everyone approves of her modern ways. When her sister Emily becomes engaged to David Christmas, it seems fate will intervene in the form of the best man: his eligible brother Johnathon. Mary finds herself in danger of falling for this handsome, almost too perfect stranger, only married women have to give up their careers as soon as they're wed and there's no way Mary is going to sacrifice her dreams for a man.

1930. Seventeen-year-old Iris Mitchell dreams of designing clothes, but there's little spare cash for fashion in their shanty-town home. The gift of a single purple ribbon from her would-be boyfriend John Tucker, however, creates an unexpected opportunity...and when Iris's brother joins the Sydney Harbour Bridge construction, the Mitchell family move to the city. Iris is torn away from John, but he's Protestant and she's Catholic, so perhaps it wasn't meant to be.

At 17 Veronica O’Shay is happier running wild on the family farm than behaving in the ladylike manner her mother requires, and she despairs both of her secret passion for her brother’s friend, Jack Murphy, and what promises to be a future of restraint and compliance. But this is 1913, and the genteel tranquillity of rural Beecroft is about to change forever as the O’Shay and Murphy families, along with their friends, the Dwyers, are caught up in the theatre of war, and their fates become intertwined.

An epic and lyrical tale of love, adventure and gambled fortunes that ranges from the wild cloaked woodlands of Ireland to the Victorian Alps of colonial Australia from a best-selling Australian author. For fans of Nicole Alexander, Colleen McCullough and Fiona McIntosh. 1879: 'Invisible' Anne Brown fears she'll never escape the harshness and poverty of her life in County Donegal, Ireland. Until, one dramatic Beltane night, her life is changed forever and she leaves to seek her fortune in far-flung Australia.