Colleen McCullough

The Hurlingford family have ruled the small town of Byron, nestled in the Blue Mountains, for generations. Wealthy, powerful and cruel, they get what they want, every time. Missy Wright lives with her widowed mother and crippled aunt in genteel poverty. Hurlingfords by birth, all three are victim to the family's rule of inheritance: the men take it all. Plain, thin and unforgivably single, it seems Missy's life is destined to be dreary. But then a...

Chief of detectives Carmine Delmonico walks into Chubb University halls to be greeted by a corpse clamped in a bear trap, all traces of life drained from it. And this is just the beginning. Suddenly Carmine has more pressing matters on his mind than finding a name for his newborn son.

The four Latimer sisters are famous throughout New South Wales for their beauty, wit and ambition. They have always been close; always happy. They thought this would never change. But then they left home to train as nurses, swapping the feather beds of their father's townhouse for the spartan bunks of nursing accomodation. And now, as the Depression casts its shadow across Australia, they must confront their own secret desires as the world changes...