Cirrus@Austlit

'Here is an unforgettable woman. A woman as strong and as beautiful as the raw new country she helps to carve from the wilderness. A woman of fierce pride, yet gently devoted to her children, and possessed with an undying vision about the future of her land, Sara Dane epitomizes the heart of her untamed country - Australia.

'Set in the colorful days of the late Eighteenth and the early Nineteenth Centuries, Sara Dane unfolds the history of New South Wales, from its beginnings as a penal colony to the day when it could lift its head in contentment and peace.

'From the day in 1792 when young Sara, savagely sentenced in England to transportation on a trumped-up charge, came ashore at Botany Bay, until the day she returns triumphantly wealthy and prominent to her native London, her story rings with the fire of a great passion.

'Sara's story is also the story of the men who loved her - Richard Barwell, her childhood love who possessiveness followed her thousands of miles; Andrew Maclay, whose strength and cunning combined with hers to produce an empire; Jeremy Hogan, the Irish rebel, whose presence meant security as Sara faced the crises of convict outbreaks, giant floods, and armed rebellion with resolution. And then there was Louis de Bourget, the mysterious French emigre' whose love for her beauty and order brought a peace to Sara's life she had thought impossible.

'But throughout her life, Sara held to her own personality tenaciously. All of Sydney knew her as a shrewd business-woman, magnificent, unconventional - but above all, a woman. ' (Publication summary)

'The house on the marshes...

Born illegitimate, Jane Howard inherits nothing but the fiery hair and indomitable spirit of her mother's family, the Blakes. Yet when exquisite, extravagant Anne Blake dies, it is Jane who disposes of the debt-ridden London household.

She goes to Blake's Reach, the ancient marsh fastness of the Blakes, where the smugglers who prowl the marshes befriend her.

Then Charles Blake returns, an aristocrat fleeing the French Rebolution, and lays claim to Blake's Reach...' (Publisher's blurb)